SM Bus Controller has no driver

In Device Manager I am seeing a yellow alert symbol next to the SM Bus
Controller under "Other Devices". If I right click and select Properties
I am told the driver is not installed. I have searched online but cannot
find anywhere that will tell me exactly what driver I need and how to
get it. I do not have a Windows XP disk (I am Home SP3)and I do not have
a Recovery Console as this was lost in a reformat. Can anyone tell me a)
what is SM Bus controller, and b) under these circumstances,how can I
find ,and where, the right one?
Many thanks.
Richard

Chipsets
SMBus controller not detected properly
http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/cs-013541.htm

--
Rey


"Richard" wrote:

> In Device Manager I am seeing a yellow alert symbol next to the SM Bus
> Controller under "Other Devices". If I right click and select Properties
> I am told the driver is not installed. I have searched online but cannot
> find anywhere that will tell me exactly what driver I need and how to
> get it. I do not have a Windows XP disk (I am Home SP3)and I do not have
> a Recovery Console as this was lost in a reformat. Can anyone tell me a)
> what is SM Bus controller, and b) under these circumstances,how can I
> find ,and where, the right one?
> Many thanks.
> Richard
> .
>

On 04/07/2010 16:55, Rey Santos wrote:
> Chipsets
> SMBus controller not detected properly
> http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/cs-013541.htm
>
Rey....many thanks for your help, but I realise now I should have said
that I have an AMD Athlon 64 Processor with an MSI Amethyst - M circuit
board (info from Belarc Advisor), which I presume means that Intel
drivers etc won't work. Would you be able to point me to the same page
for this chipset?? I hope I am using the right jargon, and that this is
the reason your link above refused to work. Thank you again.
Richard

Richard wrote:
> On 04/07/2010 16:55, Rey Santos wrote:
>> Chipsets
>> SMBus controller not detected properly
>> http://www.intel.com/support/chipsets/sb/cs-013541.htm
>>
> Rey....many thanks for your help, but I realise now I should have said
> that I have an AMD Athlon 64 Processor with an MSI Amethyst - M circuit
> board (info from Belarc Advisor), which I presume means that Intel
> drivers etc won't work. Would you be able to point me to the same page
> for this chipset?? I hope I am using the right jargon, and that this is
> the reason your link above refused to work. Thank you again.
> Richard

Using Ebay, the board number is MS-7184. It is an HP motherboard,
contract manufactured by MSI. That means if they wanted, MSI doesn't
need a support page for it, as HP provides the support to the end
user. It would be considered an OEM motherboard. HP drivers would be
the place to look.

http://cgi.ebay.com/MSI-MS-7184-Amet...e m20b1c9c1e5

Chipset is ATI Radeon Xpress 200. RS482/SB400.

http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/d...reg_R1002_USEN

Normally, you'd enter the HP web site, and search for driver support
based on the HP computer model number. While I can try and map backwards
from MS-7184 to many many computer models, that would be stupid. It
is better for you to do it, as you know the HP model number. I'd
only get it wrong doing it backwards.

*******

Now, other than that, you can search for a motherboard with similar
characteristics.

http://www.msi.com/index.php?func=downloadindex

In the manual download section, select:

Mainboard
AMD Platform
Socket 939
ATI
ATI Radeon Xpress 200
RS480M2 (one of four motherboards using that chipset)

That board bears some cosmetic similarity. MSI offers a jumbo
347MB download, which would presumably cover all of ATI's
Southbridge chips (like the SB400). The SMBUS is on the Southbridge.

I could start here, and look for some other brand of motherboard
with that chipset. Use RS480/RS482 SB400 for Chipset value.

http://www.motherboards.org/mobot/

Then I can try something like this -- RS480-M (V1.0) from ECS.
ECS offers a 6.82MB download in the RAID section, claiming
to have an "SMBus Driver, Version 5.10.1000.7 For
Win2000 / WinXP / WinXP x64".

http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Pro...uID=24&LanID=9

The important bits there are relatively tiny. There doesn't appear
to be anything carrying files for this. It appears to load
some registry entries. I used 7-ZIP to burrow down into the
downloaded package, and see what is in there. The INF file is a
text file, that controls the installation and matches VEN and
DEV to actual hardware. A driver won't work, unless some VEN and
DEV line in the INF file, matches the hardware.

SB460\Win3264\SMBUS\

SMBusati.cat 7681 bytes
SMBUSati.inf 2559 bytes

On the larger 347MB download, I get this. This includes support
for more OSes.

AMD\Packages\Drivers\SBDrv\SMBus\XP\

SMbusati.cat 10539 bytes
SMBUSati.inf 2639 bytes
SMBUSati.msi 89600 bytes

If you unzipped either package, right clicked the .inf file and
selected "Install" from the menu, you should get the effects of
that driver installation. Set a System Restore point, before doing so.
Device Manager also has the option to "rollback" the last driver
installation, so there is an alternative besides using a Restore
Point, to get rid of a bogus driver.

Anyway, those are some ideas. But first I'd try the HP site,
as they're your source of support. The other ideas are just
alternatives, if you cannot figure out what to get from HP.

This is the INF file from the larger, 347MB download.

******* Begin SMBUSati.inf *******

; SMBUSati.inf
;
; Installation file (.inf) for the ATI SMBus device.
;
; (c) Copyright 2002-2006 ATI Technologies Inc
;

[Version]
Signature="$CHICAGO$"
Provider=%ATI%
ClassGUID={4d36e97d-e325-11ce-bfc1-08002be10318}
Class=System
CatalogFile=SMbusati.cat
DriverVer=02/26/2007,5.10.1000.8

[DestinationDirs]
DefaultDestDir = 12

;
; Driver information
;

[Manufacturer]
%ATI% = ATI.Mfg, NTamd64

[ATI.Mfg]
%ATI.DeviceDesc0% = ATISMBus, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4353 <---- Identifies the supported chip
%ATI.DeviceDesc0% = ATISMBus, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4363
%ATI.DeviceDesc0% = ATISMBus, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4372
%ATI.DeviceDesc0% = ATISMBus, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4385

[ATI.Mfg.NTamd64]
%ATI.DeviceDesc0% = ATISMBus64, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4353
%ATI.DeviceDesc0% = ATISMBus64, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4363
%ATI.DeviceDesc0% = ATISMBus64, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4372
%ATI.DeviceDesc0% = ATISMBus64, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_4385

;
; General installation section
;

[ATISMBus]
AddReg=Install.AddReg

[ATISMBus64]
AddReg=Install.AddReg.NTamd64

;
; Service Installation
;

[ATISMBus.Services]
AddService = , 0x00000002

[ATISMBus64.Services]
AddService = , 0x00000002

[ATISMBus_Service_Inst]
ServiceType = 1 ; SERVICE_KERNEL_DRIVER
StartType = 3 ; SERVICE_DEMAND_START
ErrorControl = 0 ; SERVICE_ERROR_IGNORE
LoadOrderGroup = Pointer Port

[ATISMBus_EventLog_Inst]
AddReg = ATISMBus_EventLog_AddReg

[ATISMBus_EventLog_AddReg]

[Install.AddReg]
HKLM,"Software\ATI Technologies\Install\South Bridge\SMBus",DisplayName,,"ATI SMBus"
HKLM,"Software\ATI Technologies\Install\South Bridge\SMBus",Version,,"5.10.1000.8"
HKLM,"Software\ATI Technologies\Install\South Bridge\SMBus",Install,,"Success"

[Install.AddReg.NTamd64]
HKLM,"Software\Wow6432Node\ATI Technologies\Install\South Bridge\SMBus",DisplayName,,"ATI SMBus"
HKLM,"Software\Wow6432Node\ATI Technologies\Install\South Bridge\SMBus",Version,,"5.10.1000.8"
HKLM,"Software\Wow6432Node\ATI Technologies\Install\South Bridge\SMBus",Install,,"Success"

;
; Source file information
;

[SourceDisksNames]
1 = %DiskId1%,,,

[SourceDisksFiles]
; Files for disk ATI Technologies Inc Installation Disk #1 (System)

[Strings]

;
; Non-Localizable Strings
;

REG_SZ = 0x00000000
REG_MULTI_SZ = 0x00010000
REG_EXPAND_SZ = 0x00020000
REG_BINARY = 0x00000001
REG_DWORD = 0x00010001
SERVICEROOT = "System\CurrentControlSet\Services"

;
; Localizable Strings
;

ATI.DeviceDesc0 = "ATI SMBus"
DiskId1 = "ATI Technologies Inc Installation Disk #1 (System)"
ATI = "ATI Technologies Inc"

******* End SMBUSati.inf *******

Paul

Richard wrote:

> Hello Paul... I downloaded the 6.82mb .inf file from ECS, which reads
> exactly the same as the one from the larger 331 mb file you quote
> above....and it seems to have worked perfectly!! I have not a clue what
> it does or how important it is, but it no longer shows up with a yellow
> alert or even at all! In fact neither does "Other Devices" under which
> it used to appear. I thank you very much indeed. Like I say, I don't
> know anything about an SM Bus, but the problem has been there a while
> and it is never nice seeing alerts all over the place. How do you find
> these sites? I have searched the various sites using the details I know,
> but could never find a mention of specific SM Bus controllers or
> anything useful other than very general info etc. Anyway very much thank
> you again!.
> Regards, Richard.

The SMBus is a system management bus of sorts. It is an I2C bus,
with serial clock and data. It operates at a very low speed and
talks serially (uses one wire for the data signal, and sends one
bit at a time).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I2c

Purely as a joke or to prove a point, one of my buddies at work,
placed a ten foot long extension cord on a bus like that, and the
bus worked perfectly well. He was trying to make the point, that
we weren't stressing its capabilities at all, by making short length
busses. So such wiring scheme are good when you have a bunch of things
separated by relatively large distances. Inside your computer, they
don't really stress the length feature at all.

In times past, you might see a hardware monitor chip connected to
it. That chip would have been used to measure temperatures, fan speeds,
and read out the major voltages in the PC (like the measured values
of the 3.3V, 5V, and 12V rails).

That chip function has been moved to the LPC bus on newer machine.
LPC is a four bit wide bus, which operates much faster, and doesn't
have the same problems as the SMBus does. (You can't have two pieces
of software access the SMBus at the same time, because some genius
forgot to define a semaphore for such a purpose. If two programs
tried to read temperatures at the same time for example, occasionally
corrupt readings would be the result. A software semaphore would
have prevented that. The LPC bus doesn't have the same problem.)

The memory DIMMs in your computer, are connected to the SMBus. The
DIMM has some timing information, which the computer needs. Each DIMM
could have different values recorded in it. There is a small flash
memory chip on each DIMM, and that is what is connected to the SMBus.

If you had some utility that needed to read info from the DIMMs
(like Everest or CPUZ perhaps), then it might actively do a read while the
OS is running. Otherwise, there might not be a lot of activity on
that bus, on a modern system.

At one time, there was potential to connect other kinds of devices
to that bus. There was a header on the motherboard, where you could
run a cable over and connect to the bus. Perhaps something like
a fan speed controller. But that has gone out of favor. Instead,
any "toys" you want to put in a computer, can be connected to USB,
and achieve largely the same results.

If you wanted to test your SMBus, you can download Speedfan and
when you start the Speedfan program, it will probe the SMBus to
see what is on it. So that would be an example of a program
that might use the SMBus, at least long enough for it
to discover there is nothing of interest there.

http://www.almico.com/speedfan440.exe

HTH,
Paul