We received a bunch of new Dell E6420’s at work, and needed to get them prepped for drivers and our image deployment. We run a deployment process through Landesk OSD, with HII (Hardware Independent Imaging), which basically means that we have 1 image for multiple model computers.
I installed our basic Windows 7 Pro x32 image on the new machine, and was going through drivers that needed to be installed, and ran into one tricky one. In Device Manager, right-click the device and click Properties. Under the details tab, choose Hardware ID from the drop box. You’ll see something like ACPI\SMO8800 (that’s what the unknown device was on mine). Google that hardware ID and you’ll find that it’s an accelerometer, a device that detects when your laptop may be falling and instantly stops the hard disk so it isn’t damaged on impact.
I went through and extracted the drivers for it in Windows 7 x86/x64, Vista x86/x64, and XP x86/x64. The zip file is 2.79 MB (2,926,227 bytes). You can download the drivers here : LINK IS DEAD
All you have to do is extract it (I use 7zip), and navigate your update drivers to your respective OS version and x86/x64 version. If you want a more detailed write up on how to do it, with pictures, let me know.
Hopefully this helps :).
Thanks for the solution it worked for me.
By the way where did you download that .zip file from?
Thanks once again.
I extracted it from a defaulted/preloaded Windows 7 Dell E6420. It worked much better that way, also didn’t need to install any software either.
Thank you for this. Dell sure does make imaging these things a pain in the ass.
Agreed, I have to do this for ever model :s. Not sure what changed, but they seemed to have made it a bit more difficult.
We received our first batch of Dell E6420’s at work as well. Installed Win7 ent from scratch and got the same “unknown device” under device manager.
I just want to say thanks! it worked 🙂
Glad to hear, what are you guys using for deployment? I am curious :).
Landesk 9x SP2 using standard OSD. We’re still having some trouble with HII. Can’t really play with it due to my boss wants me to focus on HIPS and daily tickets. We’re just a small shop that gets hit by viruses and malware daily. We’re also running McAfee EPO, but I seem to have lost trust in them. lol
Same set up here :). Landesk with HII, works gorgeously now that I have it tweaked. What issues with HII are you having? I’ve found their support to be very useful. We also use mcafee…our real winner against virus/maleware is websense though.
look this link it works in my laptop Latitude E6410
http://support.dell.com/support/downloads/download.aspx?c=us&l=en&s=gen&releaseid=R257449&SystemID=LAT_E6410&servicetag=&os=W764&osl=en&deviceid=22031&devlib=0&typecnt=0&vercnt=1&catid=-1&impid=-1&formatcnt=0&libid=25&typeid=-1&dateid=-1&formatid=-1&source=-1&fileid=378126
That link does not work.
Hi Vivi,
Sorry it took me forever to reply back. Found out that my contract with my client is ending soon, so I kinda went into panic mode, currently looking for a job.
We’re still having HII issues with AHCI and ATA SATA type drives, I’m sure their in-house techs can figure that out. That’s the last thing I’m worried about right now. 🙁
No problem. The thing we do is, change everything to ATA to make it standards. AHCI isn’t really needed for us at least, running a XP/7 environment sitll.
Sweet! I’ll keep that in mind. Thanks, Vivi!
This is what you want:
http://support.us.dell.com/support/downloads/format.aspx?releaseid=R304083&c=us&l=en&cs=RC968571&s=hea
Yup, but you have to dig around for the correct driver.
Thanks, worked for me as well on Dell E6320. Cheers
Great, I am glad it helped someone else!
Yeah – thanks for that!
I was not aware that my laptop have an free fall protection, cool!
I am not sure how well it works, ha! Most of them are built into the drives themselves, and BIOS handles it I thought.
Looks good. Thanks
Glad I could help!
Thanks for sharing this. We use universal wim file images for win xp and win 7 flavours, so this has made life a little easier. Dells are always fun when it comes to drivers, however if you hunt hard enough you almost eventually get them all.
Exactly, and someone has to post them!
Thank you so very much for posting this solution online. I have spent the best part of two days trying to get this driver installed on my Windows 7 64bit image. Dell list only a handful of drivers on their site for Win7 64bit and this wasn’t one of them.
You’re welcome! Glad it helped, took me a few hours, enough to make it worthwhile in posting.
Thanks!!
That did the trick, the driver was driving me mad!!!!
Tell me about it! Glad I could help.
hi problem of this hardware
What is the problem? I’ll see if I can help.
Thanks mate, worked fine for me! 😀 (DELL XPS L701X)
Great, glad it worked!
thanks, it worked!
You’re welcome!
Many thanks. This has been bugging me for a while in my Windows 8 test runs, but I never got around to resolving it because I knew it wasn’t vital to the system running. Finally on RTM now and decided to clear it up, and your page was the first to give me something concrete.
Nice one, this fixed my Unknown device issues 🙂
If you’d like to download the driver from the Dell website, navigate to support.dell.com, select your make/model/OS of laptop and then look in the “Application” group of files. The unknown device is the ST Microelectronics Driver – It’s the freefall sensor!
Frustrating that the drivers are not better labeled but then again too bad there isn’t a Staples Easy Button for everything either.
drivers have always been the funkiness to PC’s, some of them take some effort to figure out :S.
ACPI SMO8800 driver missing
Ethan on September 5, 2012 at 1:06 am said:
If you’d like to download the driver from the Dell website, navigate to support.dell.com, select your make/model/OS of laptop and then look in the “Application” group of files. The unknown device is the ST Microelectronics Driver – It’s the freefall sensor!
…navigate to support.dell.com, select your make/model/OS of laptop and then look in the “System Utilities” group of files. The unknown device is the ST Microelectronics Driver…for accelerometer…
My laptops : XPS L502x & L702x .
Thank you! This helpd me alot.
Thanks! Worked like a charm
You are welcome!
Thank you! This helpd me alot
You are welcome EMAD!
So I downloaded your zip file. Found the necessary driver in it (Win7 x64) and then found out it’s all registry codes? or whatever… I don’t really know anything about the internal workings of my computer. Is there a place I need to copy-paste these files? Or do I just double-click one of the files within the folder and my comp. will take care of the rest?
Thanks in advance and thanks for already finding a solution to the problem for me XD
You can just put them on your desktop, or wherever and then run the update driver on the one that has the exclamation point next to it and point it to this directory to pull drivers from.
Ah! Thanks so much Vivi!
kindly help me wit the following hardware ids for my dell vostro 3555.or the site to the dowload the following .ACPI /SMO8800 and USB/VID_138A&_0011&REV_0078.waiting for kindly reply thanks .
7
Have you tried plugging in the free fall sensor driver?
Thanx for your article, it helped me to figure out what driver i was missing!
Tanx for this article! It worked on my Dell Studio 1749!
Alex
gg
Tanx for this article! It worked on my Dell Studio 1749!
Alex
Thanks, this worked for me too !
Thankes
thanks
Fixed that “flipping” icon in device manager on my Latitude E6520. Well done mate thanks!
hi i want to download driver
Sorry, it was just deleted! I actually don’t have a copy anymore 🙁
link broken?
Sorry, it was just deleted! I actually don’t have a copy anymore 🙁
the link says not found
Sorry, it was just deleted! I actually don’t have a copy anymore 🙁
If someone needs the driver for ACPI\SMO8800 just search for “ST Microelectronics Free Fall Sensor Driver”.
Good call, thanks Joaquim.