A driver is not installed.

Did do you a driver sweep and download the latest driver?

Problem with graphics driver, problem with chipset driver, or perhaps a virus interfering.

I'd sweep with malwarebytes, and maybe some others, possibly a bootable AV CD of some kind.

Is a restart all that's required after installing the right driver?

leileilol wrote:

A driver is not installed.

Probably right.
No videocard driver was found.

Agree with others - "standard VGA adapter" means it's using whatever in-built Microsoft driver. Figure out what the card is, and get the proper drivers for it from whoever made it (Intel/AMD/nVidia/etc) to "unleash its full potential" (I like that, and may borrow it in the future too 😎). If this happened spontaneously (e.g. yesterday it had whatever driver properly installed and working, and now suddenly does not) I'd be looking at malware/adware/etc crap, or some other issue with Windows/the driver application software because it shouldn't just spontaneously stop working like that. OTOH, if the machine had Windows re-installed, or used system restore, etc this is very common behavior. 😀

It had a working video card until suddenly their PC broke down, so the ones that repaired their PC cared about a Windows reinstallation. Unfortunately, it's "modded" so it looks too different from Microsoft's official design. And to top that, the ones that repaired their PC did not install a video card driver.

Is she on a desktop or a laptop? If it's a laptop, look up the model name/number on Google, and search for video drivers for that model. If it's a desktop, open it up and take out the video card, then look for any marks or labels that may identify it. If it's using onboard video, then identify the motherboard, and look up video drivers for that motherboard. If it's an OEM box using the stock video card, just look up the model name/number for that build, and search for video drivers for it.

If it's being detected as a "Standard VGA Adapter". that means that Windows doesn't know what card it is, and doesn't have built in drivers for it. If she's on Windows 7, you may be able to download the right drivers through WIndows Update.

She's on a desktop, and I'm not really sure what video card does she have.

Obviously you will not be able to even search for the correct driver for it until you know what make and model it is.

Tell your friend to download and run this http://www.pci-z.com/ it will show a list of all devices on the PC's PCI bus, including the video card.

If you don't know what to do with the information, post the list here.

I already did that.

Open Device Manager. Double click on graphic card. Details -> hardware id and copy and paste here the VENdor ID and DEVice ID

For me it's PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_13C2&SUBSYS_367B1458&REV_A1

If the card is not ok anymore this also happens.
So if you find the proper driver with the device ID and it still doesn't work your card might be lost. 😵

I see it alot with notebooks where the chips start to die due to heath when they age.

Yep, if the card is incorrectly flashed, particularly if you're modifying the PCI straps to 'convert' the card to a Quadro, it'll probably be detected as VGA.