Black Textures

Hello all!
Noob here. Well, I hope I'm posting this in the right section.
I have a problem with a lot of games on my laptop; basically, there
are items or objects in these particular games that appear completely
black, seem untextured.

This has appeared in Republic Commando, Jade Empire, Fable, Simpsons Hit and Run and a couple of the Hitman's. For example, in Jade Empire it's some of the railings on the quay of the first town you come to. In Hitman SA it's the lower half
of the jacket of the FSB agents and so on. Can somebody please suggest what
might be causing these problems and how they might be fixed? I'm a bit of an
obsessive, have to have everything perfect and this drives me absolutely nuts!

I read that it might have something to do with my video drivers and I updated them, no luck. Another question, with NVidia drivers can I install it over the previous one or do I have to uninstall the old one first? According to NVidia I can install over but just want to be sure.
Cheers

Without any information regarding your laptop it's hard to tell. Missing textures could be a problem with lacking video memory.

You should always uninstall the old one before installing a new one. Yeah, you can overwrite, but it doesn't mean you should. Also, being on the latest drivers doesn't always help. You might need to try a few different versions to find one that works "properly" for you.

I'll promise you something, though, you won't have everything "perfect".

I doubt a lack of video memory is to blame since the games I've mentioned are pretty old and my laptop can handle them. Now that I've installed over, will uninstalling and reinstalling help?

Bugs and glitches beyond my control I can live with, annoying graphical issues that plague my games alone I can't.

There are special tools which remove all traces of old drivers. Maybe somebody can point you to one.

I suppose the video memory has to be assigned in the notebook's BIOS. It's possible that giving it a bit more fixes the issue. Of course only if your graphics chip doesn't come with its own memory. Both cases are quite common.

NFR and/or CCleaner. NFR is more specialised and really only worth getting if you know what you're doing or you're having specific issues with files. CCleaner is pretty good, though.

I'll look into assigning additional memory. Since I've already installed the new driver over the old one, will uninstalling and reinstalling help?

Can't guarantee it but it's worth a shot.

Uninstalling drivers makes sense if you are having problems but doing it on a general basis seems pointless to me. The OS and install programs have improved a lot in past years so that step really isn't needed now, IMHO.

I doubt a lack of video memory is to blame since the games I've mentioned are pretty old and my laptop can handle them.

Can it? Most laptops are made to handle Windows Areo and YouTube, they aren't made for serious games at all. We've got to have some stats! What graphics card/chip is it using? How much memory have you got? Are you using Windows XP? What drivers are you using?