Applies to LANDesk Management Suite 9 SP3 and greater
HIIClient is the client-side portion of hardware-independent imaging (HII) in LANDESK Management Suite. HIIClient.exe is run on target machines, identifies the correct drivers for the device, then downloads and installs the drivers. It is stored on the LANDESK Core server and downloaded as needed by client machines in Windows PE during a deployment job.
HIIClient Options
There is only one option for HIIClient, which is what download method to use. HTTP or UNC. By default, running HIIClient with no switches will use HTTP to download the HII Driver Database and the necessary drivers. To have HIIClient use UNC instead, add /UNCPath to the command. This option can also be configured in the OSD script or Provisioning action by checking the box. This will cause HIIClient to get the database and drivers from a UNC share.
The exact shares that are used are the ones configured in the HII Driver Repository Manager. Preferred Servers can be used, but the shares and paths must match. For example, if the HII Driver Repository is configured as \\fileserver\share\drivers, then the Preferred Server must have the replicated files at \\preferredserver\share\drivers. HIIClient will not "fall back" to another method if the configured method (UNC or HTTP) is not available.
HIIClient Process
Download HII Driver Library
Once HIIClient.exe is downloaded and run on the client machine a web call is made to the Core server to find out the location of the HII Driver Repository and the HII Driver Database. With that information, the HII Driver Database is downloaded locally to the client. The database can be downloaded from a Preferred Server as long as it is available and current on the Preferred Server. The download process will communicate with the original HII Repository source only to verify that the file on the Preferred Server matches the original. if the file on the preferred server doesn't match the original, the download process will download from the original HII Repository source only, if there are a lot of client connections, the source server can't afford the network workload, so we need to disable the matching mechanism. Here is the steps for disabling matching mechanism:
Add the registry value in WinPE:
REMEXEC53=reg add HKLM\Software\LANDesk /f /v hii_db3_noverify /t REG_DWORD /d 1
Now the download process will download the HII Repository from preferred server directly, not the source server.
Detect Everything
HIIClient will then detect everything that is needed to find the right drivers. The OS must be installed on the device, but doesn't have to be running or ever run. HIIClient should be run right after the image is deployed. HIIClient will identify which version of Windows is installed (XP-2008) and where it is installed. It will also determine which architecture has been installed, x86 (32-bit) or x64 (64-bit). This determination is based on what OS has been installed, not what any of the hardware is capable of. This means that if Windows 7 x86 has been installed on an x64 processor, HIIClient will correctly determine that Windows 7 x86 drivers should be used.
Once the basic OS information has been determined, HIIClient will obtain a list of all hardware devices connected to the client. This information will include the Hardware Device ID and all Compatible IDs. These IDs are used to match the hardware to specific device drivers.
Match Drivers
When HIIClient has downloaded the HII Driver Database and gathered all the necessary information about the client and all connected devices, HIIClient uses this information to match devices to drivers. In order for a driver to match, it must have information about the right hardware or compatible ID.
As each match is found, it is ranked as to suitability. A driver will have a higher rank if it exactly matches the hardware ID than it would if the match is to a compatible ID, or if the match is more generic. For example, a driver that matches a specific network card would be ranked higher than another driver that matches the network card's compatible ID or matches part of the hardware ID. While both drivers might work, LANDesk uses this ranking to find the best driver available for the device.
The ranking system used by HIIClient is very similar to the system used by Windows and should produce the same results. This ranking system also means that newer, or updated drivers will be considered a better match than old drivers so the newer drivers will be used. It is not absolutely necessary to remove old drivers when an updated driver is added to the HII Driver Repository
After the drivers have been matched and ranked, only the best or highest ranked driver will be downloaded. HIIClient uses the database to determine exactly which files (drivers and supporting files) are needed. Only those files are downloaded. The downloaded drivers are placed on the system drive in \Windows\LDDriverStore.
Installing the Drivers
When the drivers are all downloaded, HIIClient will install the drivers. The steps taken to install the drivers will vary slightly based on which operating system is installed on the client
Windows XP
Windows XP does not have an "offline" method to install drivers, so HIIClient will only manually install the Mass Storage Driver (MSD) so that the machine will boot. For the rest of the drivers, HIIClient will add the appropriate information to the registry that will allow Windows to find the drivers during the normal process of installing drivers on first boot.
Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 2008, and 2012
For Windows Vista, 7 and 2008, HIIClient will use a tool called DISM to install the drivers. DISM (Deployment Image Servicing and Management) is a tool from Microsoft that allows the manipulation of "offline" images. In this case, the image has been deployed to the disk, but isn't running so it is considered offline. HIIClient will use DISM to install all of the downloaded drivers while still in WinPE.
Note: DISM will not work for Microsoft Windows Vista unless it has SP1. Any Windows Vista images that will be deployed should be updated to Windows Vista SP1 before deploying and using HII.
Logs
HIIClient will log information about the process in the HIIClient.log file. This log file can be found in WindowsPE and can be consulted if needed. It will be found in either X:\Windows\System32 or X:\LDProvisioning depending on how it was run. DISM also creates a log and it should be available at X:\Windows\Logs.