Use HP Image Assistant in silent mode to update BIOS on a machine with BIOS password

[srochford]

I'd like to use HP Image Assistant to update the BIOS on multiple computers. If I try and do it in manual mode then it's straightforward - it prompts me for the BIOS password and installs the update.

If I run it in silent mode, I can't see a way to pass in the password. this document http://ftp.hp.com/pub/caps-softpaq/cmit/whitepapers/HPIA_QuickStartGuide.pdf gives the command line switches and includes a "/silent" switch but nothing to point to the encrypted password.

How can I do this?

[PC_bam]

Hi

Please refer the CVA file for the bios update softpaq for the silent command 

for example , it might be somthing similar to this , where the -p switch is for the encrypted password. you can run the bios update utility with help switch to get the options

"HPBIOSUPDREC.exe" -s -b -r -p

. 

[srochford]

Thanks for this.

I know how to get the string for a single computer but I'm not doing one computer - I'm doing more than 10,000!

I originally tried using SSM to do this but it fails because it only seems to allow for one password file for all machines and the format of the file changed for more recent machines.

Image Assistant seems to be the latest "enterprise" software from HP but it also seems to lack features which allow it to be used at scale (and is painfully slow; drivers download at just a few Mbit/s)

HP make excellent hardware and have great hardware support (I can report a fault late in the afternoon knowing that a spare part will arrive the next day or an engineer will turn up to fix things) but their software is next to useless which really lets things down.

Steve

[Brahm-O]

Hey srochford, any luck on this yet?  I've been working with trying to use the HPIA to install all drivers and BIOS automatically from the web during the task sequence.  At a worst-case scenario for right now, I can install the BIOS as a package without an application in the task sequence, but that kind of defeats the purpose of using the HP Image assistant, now doesn't it?

[Brahm-O]

Hmm I just thought of something - why not set the BIOS password really late in the task sequence?  Let HP Image assistant update the BIOS without a password and then add the password toward the end.  I'll try this, but it probably won't be for a while so I'm not sure when I'll be able to get back to you.