Graphics Problem

jumpguy

Hi there,

I'm running Windows XP on a nearly 3 year old Dell Inspiron 1501. My graphics card is an ATI Radeon Xpress 200M and it's got 700MB of memory. It is an intergrated graphics card. I have about 2GB of RAM.

I've had problems with my graphics card recently, with it being the problem identified by Windows when my computer randomly freezes (although it's rare). It all began when I attempted to upgrade the software, but all this did was download a program called Catalyst Control Center by ATI.
I'm not sure what it ever did TBH, except cause problems. Sometimes I get a message saying "Your graphics software has encountered a problem so the settings had to be reconfigured, please restart your computer to implement these settings". This is whenever I put my PC into stand-by mode and start it up. Or I got a freeze. When I start up after the freeze, Windows identified the error as a problem with my graphics card.

So, that was okay, I can handle a freeze now and again. But recently I downloaded a program for astronomy called "Stellarium" and it's not running right. Although the main screen of the program loads up, if I click an option screen, it is jargoned and messed up generally, kinda in the way you'd expect if you had a problem with graphics rendering. I'm not sure if my graphics card is simply incapable of displaying it because it's not powerful enough or if it's a software issue.

Any ideas? Thanks in advance.

jumpguy

*bump*

C'mon lads and lasses, if ye need more information please tell me! Even your faintest suspicions will do on the problem!
Mods, if I'm posting the wrong forum, could you please move it?