PCI Simple Communications Controller

Hello,
My friend's computer works at a snail's pace so I have it at home with me trying to figure out why this is happening. The computer is a Dell Dimension 2400, running Windows XP Professional.

I have scanned the disk, defragged it, ran s SFC /scandisk, through the MSCONFIG turned off everything, ran the Norton virus checker with no viruses found and uninstalled several programs to see if this would help.
Nothing so far has made this computer run normally.

When I turn on the computer I get the "New Driver" window that tries to install a PCI Simple Communications Controller and, of course, it never can. I have chatted with Dell Help and they gave me a site to download and install and I did but it didn't work. This was the site they sent me to.
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R47822&SystemID=DIM_PNT_P4_CEL_2400&servicetag=&os=WW1&osl=en&deviceid=3268&devlib=0&typecnt=0&vercnt=1&catid=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=1&libid=27&fileid=56457 "

I downloaded and ran it and it didn't help one bit.

Does anyone know where I can get this PCI Simple Communications Controller from the internet?

I have other issues with this computer but I think I should take it one step at a time.

Thanks for the help.

Jeanne

 

As your next step, download ATF-Cleaner.exe and run it, checking 'select all'. Usually helps.

 

Thanks for the quick reply. I did download ATF-Cleaner.exe and ran it. I selected all. When I went into device manager again, the PCI Simple Communications Controller in "Other Devices" was gone and I noticed the Modem was there. (Earlier there was no modem.)

As I close down and restart the computer, I get an error message something like this, "The instruction at 0x7C918Fea referred as memory, etc. etc. The memory could not be written. "

The computer is still extremely slow starting up.

Any other suggestions. Thanks again.

 

Hi Jeanne,
Beginning to sound like a malware problem. Suggest you check out the Removing Spyware & Viruses, especially the 3 stickies at the top, and do an online scan and clean the machine the best you can and then post a hijackthis log on that forum.

 

Hi,
I completely uninstalled Norton Antivirus 2007 and also her HP all in one printer and all the slowness went away. The computer was working normally then. I did do all the spyware scans as you suggested but the computer seems clear of them now.

I returned the computer and proceeded to load Norton again from their website and loaded the drivers for her HP printer.

Norton has once again slowed her computer down to a crawl and I'm not sure about the HP printer. She is getting some of the same error messages she had before.

I left the computer with her and told her to work on it a few days and if she wants we'll get rid of Norton and load a free AVG virus scan. I'm not sure what else to do. She only has 256 RAM and with Norton running everything is slow and when a window closes, it doesn't close immediately, it disappears from the top of the window to the bottom very slowly.

I'll get back to her in a few days and see what she wants to do.

I truly feel that Norton is just hogging too much of her memory but I'll let you know what she decides.

Thanks you for all your help.

Jeanne

 

Thanks again for your help. I told my friend that she should maybe increase the RAM, and if not, we'll get rid of Norton and use the free AVG. I use AVG and really like it so I hope this is what she decides.

Thanks again.

Jeanne