We are in process of rolling out PKI project in our environment. Client machines have Windows 7 Enterprise 64 bit SP1. We use McAfee Endpoint Encryption 5.2.12 on all the clients. Our environment has mix of Dell (Latitude E6400, E4300, E4310, E6410, E6420) and HP (EliteBook 8460p, EliteBook 2560p) laptops. There is no problem with Dell laptops at all. However with HP machines there are two issues. 1. With 8460p model, after installing the Alcor card reader driver, when I insert the Smart card into the reader it starts searching the drivers on windows update. In three minutes, it updates the drivers and works fine. My concern is when I am installing the card reader drivers explicitly why is going to Windows update. HP 2560p also has the same card reader but this problem doesn't appear on that model. I have disabled smart card driver search in Group policy as well. This behaviour is holding the roll out. 2. When I enable the Smart card authentication in McAfee console for any HP laptop, and try to use my smart card on the pre boot screen of McAfee Endpoint encryption, machine freezes. Same McAfee encryption configuration works fine on Dell laptops. Please help.

1. Go to device manager, go to properties of card reader, select details tab and select "hardware IDs" as property. Do they match for both HP Laptops? (to identify if they are really identical) 2. Any event log entries? If not I would have a look with Sysinternal's Process Monitor, you can enable boot logging which should catch the issue then. (could still be hard to troubleshoot this way, maybe someone has a better idea).

Thanks Orioon. 1. They are really identical. 2. I will give it a try but doubt that it will capture anything as the machine would be on McAfee EEPC screen. Please suggest if somehow I can suppress the driver installation popup.