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W520: Missing Drivers

W500/W510/W520 and W700/W701 Series
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Coswyn
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Location: Phoenix, AZ

W520: Missing Drivers

#1 Post by Coswyn » Mon May 23, 2011 1:16 am

I have a few devices in the 'Other Devices' section of the 'Device Manager' screen that I can't seem to find drivers for:
- PCI Serial Port
- PCI Simple Communication Controller
- SM Bus Controller

Can anyone help identify/locate them?

Thanks.

ZaZ
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Re: W520: Missing Drivers

#2 Post by ZaZ » Mon May 23, 2011 1:43 am

I am assuming you did a clean install? If so, which version? The PCI communications device is probably the modem. The SMBus can probably be fixed by installing the chipset drivers. I'm not sure on the other. Perhaps it's one of the AMT drivers. If you saved a copy of the swtools folder and you can let windows search it for the drive. If it's XP you'll need to burn it onto a disc and let it search the disc. System Update or Windows Update are other options.
ThinkPad L14 - 2.1GHz Ryzen 4650U | 16GB | 256GB | 14" FHD | Win11P
ProBook 470 G5 - 1.6GHz Core i5 | 16GB | 2.2TB | 17" FHD | Mint

AofI
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Location: calgary, canada

Re: W520: Missing Drivers

#3 Post by AofI » Sun May 29, 2011 10:46 am

FredGarvin wrote:I am assuming you did a clean install? If so, which version? The PCI communications device is probably the modem. The SMBus can probably be fixed by installing the chipset drivers. I'm not sure on the other. Perhaps it's one of the AMT drivers. If you saved a copy of the swtools folder and you can let windows search it for the drive. If it's XP you'll need to burn it onto a disc and let it search the disc. System Update or Windows Update are other options.
Same issues, clean install and two mystery controllers. Thing is, this system doesn't have a modem... guess I could try installing the drivers anyway.

ZaZ
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Re: W520: Missing Drivers

#4 Post by ZaZ » Sun May 29, 2011 11:19 am

Let Windows search the SWTools folder. That's what I did and I've got no missing drivers.
ThinkPad L14 - 2.1GHz Ryzen 4650U | 16GB | 256GB | 14" FHD | Win11P
ProBook 470 G5 - 1.6GHz Core i5 | 16GB | 2.2TB | 17" FHD | Mint

commander
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Re: W520: Missing Drivers

#5 Post by commander » Sun May 29, 2011 6:46 pm

FredGarvin is right. Install AMT drivers.

Colonel O'Neill
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Re: W520: Missing Drivers

#6 Post by Colonel O'Neill » Sun May 29, 2011 8:10 pm

After installing them, remember to go into Device Manager and disable the Intel AMT devices. HECI.sys (the AMT driver) bumps DPC latencies a bit for me.
W530, W520, X61T, X200s, W550s, E590, T430

AofI
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Re: W520: Missing Drivers

#7 Post by AofI » Sun May 29, 2011 8:58 pm

Thanks guys!

Coswyn
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Location: Phoenix, AZ

Re: W520: Missing Drivers

#8 Post by Coswyn » Sun May 29, 2011 10:19 pm

The solution that made the difference for me was installing the ThinkVantage System Update application, which found and installed the parts.

ThinkVantage System Update: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... PDATE.html

commander
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Re: W520: Missing Drivers

#9 Post by commander » Mon May 30, 2011 2:01 am

Colonel O'Neill wrote:After installing them, remember to go into Device Manager and disable the Intel AMT devices. HECI.sys (the AMT driver) bumps DPC latencies a bit for me.
can you go a little bit deeper onto that? why?

davidhbrown
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Intel AMT services?

#10 Post by davidhbrown » Mon May 30, 2011 7:04 am

Intel AMT is something large enterprise IT departments would use to manage your notebook over the network without having to physically find it. It also offers some security features if you feel like buying a subscription service that supports it.

If neither of those situations apply to you, the devices are presumably just wasting your computer's time checking for network communications that will never come. (Or, if they did come, might be unauthorized, though the protocol seems to be reasonably secure.)

I hadn't gotten around to disabling any of this yet myself and appreciate the suggestion. Just disabled the "Intel(R) Active Management Technology - SOL" under Ports. Anyone have any thoughts on the usefulness of the "Intel(R) Management Engine Interface" listed under "System devices"? Hmmm... this Lenovo page seems to be suggesting there's a lot more than just the device drivers involved.

Looks like the top two items are the drivers; the second two are a couple of services. I've disabled all four. Most of the rest are applications which when not running shouldn't affect anything other than diskspace. Not sure about the WMI provider, but that's a bit beyond my top-of-the-head knowledge so I'll leave it alone.
W520 (2820QM, Q2000M, FHD, mSATA SSD, dock)
Previous: T61p (died 1m past warranty :-(), Dell 8600, iBook ("Dual USB"), Gateway Millennium, Macintosh G4 , PowerPC Mac clone, Mac Duo 210, iBook (clamshell), Quadra 630, Mac IIsi, C-128, C-64, Vic-20

commander
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Re: W520: Missing Drivers

#11 Post by commander » Mon May 30, 2011 3:11 pm

I cannot see AMT in my devices list... strange.
Also, probably they are some services running related to this too.

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