New Old Laptop
I just can’t get enough of sloppy seconds when it comes to laptops. Bunky’s 4-year old laptop seems to have kicked the bucket, as it has developed a problem where it does not even turn on half the time. Prior to this death, the laptop was agonizingly slow, although the addition of some RAM and the installation of Google Chrome did help a little (Firefox took over 2 minutes to load…). I only use the laptop for about 6 hours each week (my two 3-hour classes), so I really didn’t want to buy a new laptop. However, since my brother got a MacBook a few months ago, I took his old laptop (I think it is just under 2 years old).
Apparently my brother likes to treat his electronics the same way Bunky does. The laptop is all beat up, and the plastic covers on the hinges are busted off so you can see some of the wires. Also, the Asus F3JM laptop I got had some kind of maddening 2/55/33 partition split and I didn’t have the manual to know which button entered Setup. I (foolishly) tried to use the XP disc in Windows itself to delete the partitions and tried to resize the main partition, but of course this did not work. Finally, after much searching I found that F2 enters Setup (thanks for not having a prompt, Asus) and so I was able to boot from the XP disc and reformat the HD as one large partition.
The laptop only has 1GB RAM, but I think I will hold off on adding more in the near future. It took me a while to figure out that there was a switch to turn on the wireless (it was Off when I received the laptop), but the laptop is now working. I managed to get almost all the drivers, although I have not figured out what driver the SM Bus Controller needs. The descriptions of most of the hardware were completely unhelpful, and quite a few were labeled as Other Device (turned out to be mostly RealTek drivers and cardreader drivers). Because the latches are busted up, the monitor tends to sway a bit when moved, but this isn’t a big deal because the laptop is almost always on a table in class. This laptop only has to last about 1.5-2 years, and for now I’m hopeful it will be up to the challenge.
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Try downloading Everest to find out what the SM Bus Controller actually is:
http://www.majorgeeks.com/download4181.html
Most likely a chipset driver is my guess off bat.
Slow Motion Bus Controller simply means you don’t need to pay if you’re faster.
What if I have to keep the bus moving over 50 MPH?
Ask an officer for a nearby moebius loop.