PCI Simple Communications Controller

I'm running a Dell Inspiron 530 with XP Pro SP3, and had a scary start-up this am. System found "new hardware" - PCI Simple Communications Controller, I was unable to connect to Internet, and anti-virus start-up scan locked up. I have not installed any new s/w or h/w within the past 30 days, and I had no problems accessing hard drive files or running installed s/w. After about 3 reboots, everything seems fine for the past 2 hours, scans found no suspicious files. I took a look at Device Manager and everything looked good, but I was unable to find anything specifically related to PCI Simple Communications Controller.

I Googled this Controller, and while I found numerous references, none of them explained on my level what it was or what may have caused the problem. I would appreciate any feedback regarding what this device is and what it does, and how worried I should be about this morning's start-up. FWIW, this it the primary computer for a small biz. I back-up daily, but a crash would be painful. I'm an intermediate user, but not very knowledgeable regarding hardware. Thanks very much for any guidance.