Acer Aspire 3050 and Bus SM (solved!!).

Hi Everyone !!.

Since this great page helped me to solve some issues recently, it's my turn to help you all with this (little) but anoying problem with the Acer Aspire 3050 series laptops and the SM bus device wich never goes away once you install Windows XP. It took me hours of search and thinking until finally got the solution, so here it's and you won't have to suffer like me ;-) ;-P

* Ok, you install a fresh copy of Windows XP, and after you finish, you download the drivers for sound, video, etc. from Acer's website. So far so good, finish them all until only remains the misterious "SM Bus" in the list.

* You are right, THERE IS NO DRIVER FOR IT in Acer's website. This "SM Bus" or "Bus SM" belongs to the South Bridge of the ATI Radeon® Xpress 1100 chipset included in Aspire 3050's motherboard. I made a check of the site and FTPs to be sure but saddly they never included it for download.

* Now, go to the AMD/ATI website, downloads section. As I write this, the link points to Catalyst 7.7:

http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/xp/integratedip-xp.html

But if you started from the main page or there is a new release of Catalyst then click in Drivers & Software --> Windows XP/Professional --> Integrated/Motherboard --> Radeon Xpress 1100.

* In the next page, click on "Individual driver download packages and Avivo™", this takes you to every packet for download so click on "South Bridge Driver". Save the file (ie, 7-7_xp32-64_sb_49709.exe for C 7.7) to your disk in some know folder.

* Find the exe file you just downloaded and double click on it. A dialog box will ask for a folder to install (default for 7.7 is C:\ATI\SUPPORT\7-7_xp32-64_sb_49709), feel free to change it for the one you prefer, just remenber where.

* As soon as it finish, you will see the InstallShield for installation. Click Cancel !

* Almost done. Right click on My PC and then Properties --> Hardware --> Device Manager. Double click on the SM Bus yellow mark. Now update the driver pointing to the SMBUS folder (mine was default so it was on C:\ATI\SUPPORT\7-7_xp32-64_sb_49709\SMBUS).

* Voila !! No more SM Bus ! =) =) =).

I would be happy if this helped. I really enjoyed figuring out. ;-)

Greetings,

Macufendo.