What does HP One Agent do?

[dbookbinder]

Today, HP One Agent appeared on my computer. So far, the only discussion I've found is around  how to remove it and keep it from reinstalling. Does anyone know what it actually does? Though maybe not likely, it is possible it does something useful with the 800MB it occupies and it would be helpful to know what that is before deciding to uninstall it.

[JBRATI]

You may have a look at thread https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Operating-Systems-and-Recovery/HP-One-Agent/m-p/8985096#M20806...

[dbookbinder]

Yes, that's one of the threads that describes how to get rid of HP One Agent I mentioned, and I have read that one. But before I decide whether or not to delete it, I'd like to know what it does. According the the HP employee I chatted with today, it started out as a printer-related program but now includes a wide range of other maintenance actions as well. However, he wasn't very specific. I'd like to know specifics.

[itorres008]

What I would like to know if this One Agent replaces other similar HP software services related to hardware monitoring, drivers, updates that are running since I got the Pavilion Gaming Laptop, like the HP System Info HSA Service which produces many errors logged as Event ID 5858 from source WMI-Activity. This queries the WMI repository for hardware and software information but it is producing this error constantly.  It could be software bug, some WMI data not present (corruption tested and ruled out). I have it disabled for now.

The name HP One Agent suggests it does what some other older services did and that those should be uninstalled.

[dbookbinder]

That was my thought, too, based on what is stored in the HP One Agent log file. It gathers information about multiple systems and apparently makes adjustments based on what it finds each time the task runs. This seems similar to, for instance, what Readyboot does each time we reboot the system. So I'm reluctant to uninstall it until I know what it does. One nasty thing it does, however, is occasionally delete previous restore points. I hadn't seen it do this on previous reinstallations, but it did not the most recent one, and wiped out a restore point I needed. This, no other monitoring service I know of does, and it should not do that. There was room in my restore point cache for several installations of this program.

[itorres008]

I believe the restore points and their storage are managed by Windows. There is a Windows setting where one sets a percentage of disk storage for use for restore points. I believe Windows will delete the oldest restore point(s) necessary to fit the new restore point it's creating, not the software requesting a restore point to be made. 

I have 20% disk space for restore points which is too much, but I had problems with Shadow Copy Service and backups failing and some suggested increasing this and I've left like that. Anyway, I  do have 15 restore points made within one month and half are from HP One Agent, others are from Win Update and backups running. HPOA runs and if there is a already a recent restore point it doesn't create one.

If you have disk space you could increase the percentage storage quota for restore points so you can keep more versions.

Still I wonder if some of the HP services are redundant and the One Agent or Omen one should be replacing one or some of the others, especially HP Sys Info Cap which causes 5858 error Events.