What exactly is "HP One Agent" and how do I stop Windows from reconfiguring it daily?

[dbookbinder]

Apparently your escalated tech support guy is wrong. I turned off all permissions in HP Privacy (all but the first one I had turned off long ago), uninstalled HP One Agent with Revo Uninstaller and the "Advanced" setting, verified that the task and startup items were gone, along with the service ... and two days later,  it's back!

Also, I uninstalled it again just now and I see Revo missed three instances of hponeagent.exe in the Driverstore\FileRepository folder. I don't know if that's significant.

It's like the hand coming out of the grave at the end of a George Romero zombie movie!

EDIT: Second time was the charm. I toggled the privacy setting, uninstalled again, and also got rid of the copies in the FileReposity, and it's been gone for about three weeks.

[JYV]

I am puzzled about the link to Windows update often mentioned here. I set Windows update to hold any update for 7 days and HP One Agent reinstalled itself as usual. Furthermore you might have the illusion to clear the problem because if you boot with no Internet connection (and connect minutes after the boot) HP One Agent won't create a restore point. I have sorted the problem for good about a month ago by restoring Windows 10 to factory settings thanks to the HP Recovery partition. I have immediately updated to Windows 11 and HP One Agent is just a memory.

[dbookbinder]

The whole program is very strange -- not only what it actually does or why it's so hard to uninstall, but also which computers it "decides" to install itself on. I just finished setting up a new HP Laptop 17 for my girlfriend. Same form factor, but a backlit keyboard, touch screen, and an AMD processor, rather than the Intel I have. No trace of HP One Agent, even after several Windows updates during setup. She's running Windows Home, while I have Pro. Her older HP laptop runs Windows 10 Home and also doesn't have HP One Agent, though I believe I recall reading on one of these threads that people with Home and/or Windows 10 also have it installed.

Curiouser and curiouser....

[Al123411]

It's not beneficial to remove that app. It helps certain components function better. You wouldn't remove random parts from under the hood of your car, right? 🙂 If you really don't like the app, choose 'No' for the HP Support consent when setting up a new system, or find and change it in the HP Privacy Settings.

[dbookbinder]

How have you determined that it helps certain components function better? HP doesn't seem to be saying what it can based on my own and others' interactions with HP tech support.

It's really unclear whether it does what you say, by gathering and analyzing performance data, or it just sends that data to HP so they can, theoretically, improve performance of their product line. Microsoft does both -- some monitoring is for our benefit, some for theirs -- and I've found no harm at all in turning off the gobs of telemetry data it wants to get to supposedly improve the performance of my computer. 

[JBRATI]

HP did not give any coroporate answer, why ? The names of HPOA components (analytics... ) are strange for a support app. It it were so important for support, it should have been impossible to remove it. An official HP answer about HPOA goal would clarify this.

[alx181]

"HP One Agent" is a software that helps manage updates and maintenance tasks on HP computers like your Pavilion Desktop TP01-0019. 

To stop HP One Agent from reconfiguring, you can disable its auto startup in the Windows Task Manager and disable the "HpOneAgentRepairTask" in the Windows Task Scheduler:

• Open the Windows Task Manager
• Disable HP One Agent's auto startup
• Open the Windows Task Scheduler
• Click Libraries on the left side of the screen
• Find the HpOneAgentRepairTask
• Highlight the task, right click it, and select Disable from the drop-down list

[dbookbinder]

This appears to work only until the next update of the software, at which point it re-inserts itself in autorun and, sometimes but not every time in my experience, also re-enables the task.

To truly stop it, you also have to tell HP you don't permit them to have access to any of your information. Which, itself, seems to belie the idea that this program is primarily intended to improve the efficiency of our computers, rather than to provide them with information that may or may not be useful to us in the future.

To verify this, I recently set up a new HP laptop for a friend and turned off that privacy setting. HP One Agent has not been installed on  her system. If it were the case that it was a useful program, it seems to me it would simply not send data to HP but would still install on computers where that privacy setting was set. Of course, I only have two data points to go by, but after at first thinking this program was beneficial or benign, now I'm not so sure.

[dbookbinder]

Recently, I helped a friend set up her new HP laptop. I turned off all the HP privacy settings. Two weeks later, HP One Agent has still not been installed on her system. If its primary purpose was to benefit the users, rather than to send data to HP, I would expect it to install itself and just not send data to HP. In the absence of any clear statement from HP about its purpose, I'm skeptical that it is a useful program for us, as opposed to one for HP.

[dunworkin]

What concerns me is that here we are in an official HP support forum and there is no input from any HP staff. HP are basically ignoring the issue, neither confirming or denying the purpose of this software. Personally, I'm happier without it running on my laptop.