W520: Missing Drivers

[Coswyn]

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]

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.

[AofI]

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]

Let Windows search the SWTools folder. That's what I did and I've got no missing drivers.

[commander]

FredGarvin is right. Install AMT drivers.

[Colonel O'Neill]

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.

[AofI]

Thanks guys!

[Coswyn]

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]

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]

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.

[commander]

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