fed up with wifes laptop.

peter_the_piper

Inspiron 1501, XP, 1gig ram. Latest bios
Was working fairly well till she got a virus which screwed up everything. Rather than mess about trying to find it we reinstalled XP and sp3 and current updates. On device manager there is a ? on Base system Device and SM Bus controller. How do I clear this? I have the Dell utilities disk which came with it.
Also there seems to be a delay when inserting a drive into USB and a lag on typing which I can't seem to get rid of as well as a lag on screen scrolling.
Any help would be appreciated as I am getting stick. Weren't me that got the virus!!!

poppy10_2

You need to reinstalll the drivers - you can get them from the Dell website, just click on "technical support"->""support for home users"->"drivers and downloads" and select your laptop model.

The ones you need are the the SMBus driver and card reader driver, but it's a good idea to update all the drivers if you've done a full reinstall of XP - the lag on scrolling is probably because you need to install the touchpad driver and graphics drivers.

GunJack

as a backup to the dell site, also get driverMax, which I've found is pretty good at identifying unknown hardware/drivers..just google it

Hammyman

Please don't get Drivermax. You need the SD Card reader drivers if I remember correctly.

GunJack

Hammyman wrote: »

Please don't get Drivermax.

what's up hammy ?? I've never had a problem with it - install, use to get drivers - uninstall.... it's helped me out on occasion.

you had issues with it ??

peter_the_piper

Thanks for the help, have now lost all the ? on device manager. I did not know that Dell insists on downloading and installing drivers in a specific order, pity they do not make this clear on the driver cd.. All I have to clear now is the lag when a key is pressed on the keypad, its like when you press the keys too quickly and get the beeping noise before the letters come up on the screen. Also the (up to 15mins) delay in registering the usb drive when inserted.

dogmaryxx

Try booting the computer in safe mode and check if the keyboard works normally.

peter_the_piper

Keyboard works perfectly in safe mode using openoffice.

dogmaryxx

Work your way through disenabling add-ons to find if any is the cause.

Do 50% at a time.

Hammyman

GunJack wrote: »

what's up hammy ?? I've never had a problem with it - install, use to get drivers - uninstall.... it's helped me out on occasion.

you had issues with it ??

From what I remember, it used to be an Adware job. Looking at the screenshots of the current version there don't appear to be any but then again, it doesn't state whether the screenshots are paid for or free version.

I don't particularly like ad sponsored products because, like The Pirate Bay found out, some of them are infected with malware.

peter_the_piper

Tried the suggested website, signed up, asked to download a set of usb drivers and the machine froze. It took 10mins to uninstall the program and the lappy ran again. It just did not like the program.
What do you mean by add-ons? Its a fresh install with only firewall, avira, spywareblaster and crap cleaner on it, along with firefox and openoffice. Thats it.