HP Systems Software Manager [SSM] is a free systems solution that automatically updates and detects device drivers, management agent versions and BIOS on your networked computers. Its benefits and functions cover optimization of your PC’s performance, simplifying the complexity of HP System Software for PC management, streamline mass deployment of updates for HP System Software, reduction of total ownership costs, provision of consistent and stable key features for your PC environment, simultaneous automatic installation of HP System Software’s latest releases to various PCs, automatic detection of out-of-date HP System Software and BIOS and hardware, remote updates that can take place in unattended or silent mode so you can do other tasks and summary report for management and tracking purposes. HP SSM supports the unattended installation and/or upgrade of system agents, drivers and ROM system simultaneously on several computers from a central file store without implementation of an infrastructure for software distribution. HP SSM 2.1 adds support for Windows 7.0. It updates integration of SSM to support HPQFlash BIOS Update Utility. HP SSM is launching HPQFlash including management of secure passing of password credentials when it comes across SoftPaqs built with HPQFlash as installation mechanism. It also provides additional support for return conditions that are custom-defined from SoftPaqs. It now recognizes the ReturnCode section of CVA document defining unique management for application-specific values of return code. These changes will help administrators to determine if HP SSM has successfully installed a SoftPaq, or get detailed information if it fails.