ASUS Motherboard H97 Plus  

dw85745 said:

1) Driver disk is quite current. Only found one or two entries on Manufacturers site more current.

Well whether or not the Intel Management Engine driver is on the CD (as part of the chipset software) and perhaps you just overlooked selecting it for install, it's always a good idea to visit the manufacturer's driver download site to get the very most current drivers anyway. Even if these are just a duplicate of what's on the CD, at least you'll know you've got the latest and greatest software for your motherboard and related onboard peripherals, BIOS update, etc..

---- How one is supposed to make the linkage between "PCI Simple Communications Controller" and "Intel Management Engine"
is beyond me. Without the hardware IDs, this forum, and internet searches would be up the creek without a paddle.

That is EXACTLY what the Hardware ID is for. It is the exact specification for what each and every piece of hardware is, including vendor, model, revision, etc.

It is built into every piece of hardware and is exactly what the OS looks for to decide exactly what driver is required. It is exactly what Windows looks for up on the Microsoft Windows Update Catalog site in order to retrieve the latest vendor-provided drivers when you have Windows Update enabled to do that.

As far as the symbolic name which appears in Device Manager and whether or not that seems like decent and reasonable English, well that's out of our control. It's simply what the hardware vendor has chosen to name it.

As far as your "PCI Simple Communications Controller", forget about the English when trying to find the appropriate missing driver. That's precisely why we ask for the Hardware ID, so that you can then do a Google search for that hardware ID... in your case, for pci\ven_8086&dev_8cba&subsys_85341043&rev_00.

And that search returns hits which designate "Intel Management Engine". And going to the aforementioned ASUS driver download site for your H97 Pro board, sure enough in the "Chipset" section there is the download link for for "Intel Management Engine" driver.

That's just the way you need to proceed.

NOTE: from a related post on TomsHardware regarding "should I install the Intel Management Engine" driver, the reply explains:

The Intel® ME software components that need to be installed depend on the system's specific hardware and firmware features. The installer detects the system's capabilities and installs the relevant drivers and applications.

Additional Notes

If the Intel® Management Engine (Intel® ME) driver has not been successfully installed, you may see an error on a "PCI Simple Communications Controller" in Device Manager.

yes install it.

--- Based on my reading so far of "Intel Management Engine", it appears it is principally for having Intel do automatic updates to your computer. What that has to do with "PCI Simple Communications Controller" is beyond me. Not saying it won't solve the problem, only that I'd rather have this device NOT active, then have Intel do automatic updates

The industry is getting bad about everyone putting all these things on my computer (including Intel and Microsoft) which are hidden behind the scenes -- installing Autoruns and Services -- without giving me the option To/Not To Install. Providing hidden links to clouds is the latest thing,

I think conceptually that is indeed the purpose for this whole feature set... probably to provide remote administration and support for machines in an Enterprise, by the system administrators. As to whether or not you'll ever make use of this capability, the answer is almost certainly NO.

Nevertheless, your post asks for help in resolving these remaining items in Device Manager that still show missing drivers, and THIS is that missing driver!

So if you can't disable the firmware requiring this in your BIOS (it's usually Intel V-Pro or something like that), then just install the missing driver and you won't have anything missing in Device Manager any longer. You don't need to worry about anything running behind the scenes doing something without your knowledge. This is simply the driver to enable the hardware capability which would be needed in support of Remote Administration software... if you did want to make use of it, or if your corporation's network department used it to maintain its user computers remotely.

I do have a question as why certain things show up multiple times in CP > Device Manager.
For example the CPU shows up 4 times.
My guess is they consider each core a device but not sure?
Another example is ACPI Fan. Again guessing that each stub for a fan is being controlled separately and hence considered a device.

Can you post a screenshot showing what you're referring to.

I've only got one item in my own Device Manager -> Computer (and I have a quad-core CPU), and I also show zero items for Device Manager "Fans" (i.e. there is not device called "Fans", although my chipset sensor provides RPM's from the motherboard headers for FIVE fans in my system to my hardware monitoring software product Aida64).

Can you please clarify by a screenshot showing what you're asking about.