SM bios service problem

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Steerpike · #1 Post by **Steerpike** » Fri May 25, 2007 11:23 am

I have a T60 with Windows XP Pro SP2 installed.

I just noticed an exclamation point in device manager; It's on the 'SM bios service' under SM Driver. The manufacturer is shown as 'Lenovo TVT SMBIOS'.

I searched the forum, found a reference to power management. I'd like to understand why this is now suddenly (well ... not sure when it started, but I think pretty recently) showing up. Any ideas what this is? Thanks!

#2 Post by **gator** » Fri May 25, 2007 11:36 am

There was another thread with a similar issue, but nothing conclusive came out:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=42174

Did you try to update your BIOS? The latest one mentions the SMBIOS:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=41534

Anthony S · #3 Post by **Anthony S** » Fri May 25, 2007 3:24 pm

gator wrote:There was another thread with a similar issue, but nothing conclusive came out:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=42174

I started that thread, but I never did find out much about SM Driver and SMBIOS service. I had such a lot of severe and inexplicable problems with my TP that I erased my HD and installed everything from scratch. But whether my problems were related to the missing SM (system managment) stuff, I have no idea.

Steerpike · #4 Post by **Steerpike** » Sat May 26, 2007 1:10 am

Anthony S wrote: I started that thread, but I never did find out much about SM Driver and SMBIOS service. I had such a lot of severe and inexplicable problems with my TP that I erased my HD and installed everything from scratch. But whether my problems were related to the missing SM (system managment) stuff, I have no idea.

I'm pretty much at my wits end with my batch of T60's - I have several users complaining, and my own T60 'freezes' many times a week - mouse just stops moving, screen image frozen in place, and have to press/hold the power button to recover. We have virtually no 'extra' software loaded, other than ultra-mainstream stuff like MS Office. I just came from a company where we had dell latitude laptops loaded with XP Pro SP2, and a massive amount of 'extra' software such as Oracle Database, Oracle Application server, and a whole host of other stuff, and those machines were rock solid, not requiring a restart for weeks and weeks. I will admit the mechanical build quality of the Lenovo's is superior, but ... the software lockups are big problem.

I'm convinced it's the bloatware from Lenovo/IBM, and I've decided none of it is compelling - but I must stay 100% legal with licensing, so I'm not sure what I can do legally to install a clean copy of XP Pro since we don't have a corporate/volume license and Lenovo don't supply a clean install CD. I've been told that I can legally acquire a generic 'OEM' install CD, and use the license key info (Product Key) from the bottom of the laptop - I'm going to try that soon, and then take on the challenge of finding drivers for every bit of hardware on the device

ronan_zj · #5 Post by **ronan_zj** » Sat May 26, 2007 2:11 am

Steerpike wrote: I'm pretty much at my wits end with my batch of T60's - I have several users complaining, and my own T60 'freezes' many times a week - mouse just stops moving, screen image frozen in place, and have to press/hold the power button to recover.

Man, we have the same problem!!!!!

Anthony S · #6 Post by **Anthony S** » Sun May 27, 2007 7:59 am

In another thread related to this one I reported that Device Manager had a device type called SM Driver with a single device SM bios service, and that this was flagged as missing. I wondered, but never found out, if this was related to the many system problems I had been having.

Because of those problems I have now restored from recovery CDs (the recovery partition didn't work!) and am now re-installing everything. On my new clean system Device Manager shows an SM Driver/SM bios service which is not missing. But, I don't know where it came from or why it disappeared in my old system. More importantly, I don't know what it's for. The driver provider is Lenovo TVT SMBIOS and the driver is C:\\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\psadd.sys

I've googled around and found nothing useful. Can anyone offer any ideas or information?

victorcarde · #7 Post by **victorcarde** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 8:47 pm

[quote="Anthony S"]In [url=http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=42174]another thread related to this one[/url] I reported that Device Manager had a device type called SM Driver with a single device SM bios service, and that this was flagged as missing. I wondered, but never found out, if this was related to the many system problems I had been having.

Because of those problems I have now restored from recovery CDs (the recovery partition didn't work!) and am now re-installing everything. On my new clean system Device Manager shows an SM Driver/SM bios service which is not missing. But, I don't know where it came from or why it disappeared in my old system. More importantly, I don't know what it's for. The driver provider is Lenovo TVT SMBIOS and the driver is C:\\WINDOWS\system32\DRIVERS\psadd.sys

I've googled around and found nothing useful. Can anyone offer any ideas or information?[/quote]

Reply to your last comment:

I had to replace my HDD on my ThinkPad R51 and after restoring the system using the IBM CD Recovery CDs, I noticed the same exclamation mark on the SMBIOS. I called IBM and they suggested uninstalling the driver for this feature after re-boothing the exclamation mark was gone. It seems that the recover CDs are for many different Thinkpad models so in this case it tried to load a driver for a feature that my Thinkpad did not have. Everything seems to be running fine after I uninstalled the driver and re-booth.

#8 Post by **GomJabbar** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 11:08 pm

Regarding what smbios is for: http://pcpitstop.com/faq/smbios.asp

PC Pitstop wrote:PC makers are supposed to use the System Management BIOS (SMBIOS) Specification to provide a way for utilities such as ours to get information about the PC. Older PCs built before about 1998 usually do not implement SMBIOS at all; PCs built before 2000 often have serious inaccuracies in their data. Even brand-new systems can have incorrect SMBIOS data, and it is common with many systems that are not from brand-name manufacturers.

barrywohl · #9 Post by **barrywohl** » Sun Jul 15, 2007 11:56 pm

Steerpike wrote: My own T60 'freezes' many times a week - mouse just stops moving, screen image frozen in place, and have to press/hold the power button to recover.

That's the symptom my Z61p used to have. It would occur intermittently when I plugged in the AC adapter.

It turned out to be a problem with electrostatic discharge and unrelated to software.

SM bios service problem

SM bios service problem

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