Using HPIA in MDT 2013

[AF-Justin]

Hopefully this is a relatively simple question - I'm also unsure what board it belongs in...

Has anyone successfully used HP Image Assistant as part of an MDT Task Sequence to deploy software & drivers to a machine?

I currently have a Task Sequence that deploys a Reference Image for Windows 10 to any machine I connect with.  I have used the Driver packs to have some basic drivers clipped into the image, and at the moment, I'm using SSM to install needed drivers for the machines.  I want to use HPIA instead as it's a better piece of software, but so far I haven't had much luck.  The best I've gotten is that it will install (for example) 1 update (usually a FW update for Intel Mgmt Engine).

Amnyone have any experience with this?

[AF-Justin]

I think I've figured this out.  It look slike the way I was trying to do things isn't really possible because of the way HPIA handles the SoftPaqs.  Unlike SSM/SDM, HPIA will always unpack teh spXXXXX.exe files, even if they're already unpacked.  So when one instance of HPIA is being access from multiple machines across our network, and they are all using the same remote Download Directory, they step on eachothers' extractions and error out.

Looks like the best way to do this is to use a download directory local to the remote machine, which unfortunatgely means lost time, as it has to download the file, then extract, then run.  I had hoped to save some time by using the server lcoation of the software as a download directory, so  that I would not have to download each softpaq on every machine in my fleet.  I think this is a fairly large oversight by HP, but as we've been through a few versions of HPIA already, perhaps they are purposely avoiding this use-case.

[zick2500]

Hello,

I am trying to also utilize HP Image Assistant via SCCM and have been pretty successful except for when I tried to run two OSD task sequences at the exact same time. I also have a remote download directory to store all the drivers HPIA downloads.

One of the PCs updated all the drivers and BIOS firmware while the other one failed on the BIOS update. HPIA reported an internal failure but I'm guessing it's the same problem that AF-Justin mentioned.

Other than setting HPIA to download the files to the local PC (which as mentioned is a lot of wasted time and bandwidth), has anyone figured out a solution?

[AF-Justin]

Just as a quick update - this is still an issue.  if you point the HPIA software to a folder, it will always avoid downloading anything it sees there, but it will always unzip and then try to install from that location as well.  There doesn't seem to be a way to just use the unpacked files that exist in that location, which is very frustrating.  At this point I've just given up and I have MDT install HPIA, run through it 3 different times (rebooting each time) and then remove itself and any files from the machine.