Version Control Agent - Product is Installed but not Upgradeable

[Tim McGue]

On multiple servers I have a problem where a product shows as installed on the system. The product has a newer version in the support pack. Because of the difference in versions the software status for the machine gets into a minor alert status. When I try to install the software on the system I get the following message, "The software does not need to be installed on this system.". I also can't find a way to uninstall. Refreshing the inventory on the servers returns the same list.

So is there a way to get rid of these software components, let SIM ignore them, or actually get them to upgrade?

Here are the ones I'm seeing for these servers in question:
-hp ProLiant 32-Bit SCSI Controller Driver for Windows 2000/Server 2003
-HP ProLiant Advanced System Management Controller Driver for Windows 2000
-hp ProLiant Drive Array Notification for Windows 2000/Server 2003

Thanks,
Tim

[David Claypool]

How were these systems deployed? Did it originate as an image or a mirror on a previous system? It sounds like something was installed that was previously valid but now no longer is.

Can they be un-installed from the Add/Remove Programs applet in Control Panel?

[Tim McGue]

I do believe they were imaged. No, these items do not appear in add/remove programs (or any other HP item).

Tim

[Rob Buxton]

I've seen this on Servers that have been upgraded or the hardware changed. The Drivers for the old hardware remains. The VCA will not upgrade it, because it assesses that the Driver is not used. You can't delete the Driver in Windows because there's no device that it's attached to.

[David Claypool]

Duh-my mistake. You did say driver.

At one time there was a Windows 2000 "primer utility" that uninstalled all ProLiant-related stuff on an NT4 system in preparation for upgrade to Win2K (http://h18004.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/10776.html) but I don't think it works on Win2K.

Basically, it seems that Windows is okay with this (presumably plug-n-play realizes that the hardware that needs these drivers doesn't exist and so doesn't try to use them). The issue is that they are present on the disk and probably have some registry entry that refers to them so the PSP can find them and complain about them. Deleting the actual files probably won't be enough.

However, this problem is not going to be unique to components of the PSP...anything for which there was a driver in the previous machine that doesn't contain that hardware now will be in the same boat...there just isn't a pesky version control utility to complain about it.

You can avoid the problem in the future when imaging by first preparing the system with the Microsoft utility SYSPREP. I didn't get into too much detail, but it appears that SYSPREP with the /pnp switch might be able to be run on these systems in question to clean up the drivers that aren't needed. I'm not an expert in this area, but maybe someone out there knows.

[David Claypool]

Tim:

Any chance these systems are running the 6.1 or earlier PSP? I just saw an advisory cross my desk that indicates this may have been addressed in 6.2 and later. In this case the problem is reported as occuring when a piece of hardware is removed (like taking out a NIC or something) but I think the result would be the same.

[Tim McGue]

David,

Thanks for the continued looking into this. These servers are all at PSP 7.0. In fact all the software that could be updated in VCA is updated with the exception of these ones in this state.

Tim

[Tim McGue]

OK, here is where I am at now. I started with looking at the "SCSI Controller Driver". I looked around and found the inventory.xml file. I found the .sys file it was looking for and simply renamed it. It no longer showed up in the list. But it seemed like there was something else going on besides just renaming the file.

So I named it back and went into device manager. I don't know why I didn't start here a long time ago, but there were multiple SCSI devices listed above and beyond the 5i that is actually installed in the server. I removed all of them, rebooted, went back into VCA and the "SCSI Controller Driver" was no longer there. The .sys file was still on the hard drive but at least SIM was now happy.

So I went on to the next two. The "Management Controller" points to
cpqasm2.sys and the "Drive Array Notification" points to cpqdaen.sys. I'm thinking these are probably the same type of thing where a phantom device is installed that should be removed, but I don't know what devices these would be. Anyone have an idea of what actual hardware device names these drivers would point back to?

Tim

[Tim McGue]

One correction. The driver is cpqasm.sys and not cpqasm2.sys.

[Matthew Lattanzio]

I also have the same issue but dont see the XML file pointing to a driver exactly. Can you give some more detail on how to remove the driversor atleast how to remove them from vcagent inventory. Cant have yellow in the CIM console.

[Tim McGue]

Well, this hasn't been easy over all. Here is a list of ones I've approached so far:

1) hp ProLiant 32-Bit SCSI Controller Driver for Windows 2000/Server 2003: This one was caused by having a whole slew of SCSI controllers installed that weren't there. Removing the controllers from the device manager solved this one.

2) hp Remote Insight Lights-Out Edition II: The version of the driver it reports is 1.03 but it is looking for 2002.11.04. I'm trying to re-force install 1.03/2002.11.04 to see if it picks up on a change.

3) hp ProLiant Drive Array Notification for Windows 2000/Server 2003: I can't figure out where to uninstall this.

4) HP ProLiant Advanced System Management Controller Driver for Windows 2000: According to this URL (http://h18023.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/18448.html) this is only for DL380 G2 and not the G3 (having the error). Went into device manager - system devices and uninstalled "HP ProLiant iLO Advanced System Management Controller". Waiting on reboots to confirm.

[Xavier Coppin]

I have the same problem.

Any working solution ?

Thank you for your help,

Xavier

[Tim McGue]

The steps I listed in the last reponse only produced partial results. At this point I'm living with it and contemplating starting a case with HP. Sorry for dimming the light there.

Tim

[dospavlos]

I'm also having this issue. Run into it with the following components:

-HP ProLiant Advanced System Management Controller Driver for Windows 2000
-hp ProLiant Drive Array Notification for Windows 2000/Server 2003

In my case, seems to be a result of building an Altiris image on a G2 and laying it on a G3. Also had the issue in the past with ILO/RILOs and USB when building on a G2 and laying on a G1. Have been unable to find any work around except for hacking the registry. Was able to fix the ilo/rilo issue by deleting some keys in the currentcontrolset. Changing the registry and the renaming the sys files approach on the above components resulted in blue screens. Will HP please address this issue. Unless a workaround is developed, the use of the SIM for server status is pretty much useless due to false readings.

[David Claypool]

I want to remind everyone that this forum community, while useful to share experiences, is not an official escalation path of real problems to the developers. The only way you initiate that process is through customer services.

[McGriffin]

To get rid of the "HP ProLiant Advanced System Management Controller Driver for Windows 2000" entry, delete the following registry key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\cpqasm

(Reboot the system after you've deleted this key.)

This driver is only necessary on G2 systems and not on G3. When you do a hardware upgrade this driver remains on the system and cannot be updated since it's not applicable anymore.

[Mikael Rönnbäck]

Martin, thanks for the advice, I have the same problem and will test this out to see if it solves the issue for me.
(I have no imaged systems, only installations and upgrades)

[Thomas Taylor_1]

Anyone get any definitive results on this problem?

[sterls27]

I was able to resolve the system management error, we had the same problem because of hardware upgrades and old files:

Rename cpqasm.sys to cpqasm.bak
Rename cpgasm2.sys to cpqasm2.bak

Reboot-Has NEVER caused a blue screen for me.

Retry the software update and it should install the proper driver version. The problem was both files were present on the system and it could not determine which version to use, especially since they were in use, hence the system reboot. The Drive Array notification refers to CPQDAEN.sys. Renaming that file with a .bak extension removes it from the version control update list. I believe you need to reinstall with proper version from the PSP. Hope that helps if anyone else is looking and finds this, it's been years!

[dospavlos]

If anyone is having this problem as a result of snapping and deploying images on different generations of hardware, I found the best solution is to snap an image of a server without the support pack installed. Install the sp after the image is laid down and only what applies to the current hardware will be installed. You can load the nic drivers before snapping if you really need them. I found the ones Windows installs will work fine for snapping, deploying the image.