With the discovery of the CPU design flaw that makes possible speculative execution based exploits (referred to as side channel analysis or speculative execution and nicknamed "Spectre" and "Meltdown"), OS vendors have been pushing out software patches that protect against these exploits. Microsoft has also patched their operating systems. Unfortunately, some of these patches have resulted in compatibility issues with HP Sure Click. HP Sure Click will not work properly on a machine that has one of the following patches installed:
OS Version
|
Patch KB Number
|
Windows 10 RS3
|
KB4056892
|
Windows 10 RS2
|
KB4056891
|
Windows 10 RS1
|
KB4056890
|
Windows 10 TH2
|
KB4056888
|
Windows 10 TH1
|
KB4056893
|
Windows 10 20H1
|
KB4557957
|
Reasons for HP Sure Click Incompatibility
Microsoft updated the way Windows manages memory to avoid the CPU design flaw. This change caused an incompatibility issue for HP Sure Click. The incompatibility renders HP Sure Click unusable but the exact symptoms vary as described in the following scenarios:
Scenario 1: Symptoms on an already patched machine with Pre-installed HP Sure Click
When HP Sure Click is activated on a machine that has the Microsoft patch installed, the activation will succeed but HP Sure Click will fail to initialize. The user will see a generic initialization error and the HP Sure Click Secure browser will not be usable.
Scenario 2: Symptoms on an already patched machine with HP Sure Click installed from a softpaq
When the HP Sure Click softpaq is downloaded and installed on a machine that has the Microsoft patch installed, the HP Sure Click install will succeed but it will fail to initialize. The user will see a generic initialization error and the HP Sure Click Secure browser will not be usable.
Figure 1. HP Sure Click Health status shows: "HP Sure Click requires initialization". And a pop-up message states: "Initialization failed, please contact your system administrator or try initializing HP Sure Click from Desktop Console again".

Scenario 3: For computers that have not yet been patched:
If your machine has not been patched with the Microsoft update, HP Sure Click will continue to work fine. If the patch is subsequently installed by Windows update and the machine rebooted (this patch requires a reboot and will only be active after a reboot), then HP Sure Click will not be able to start its virtual machines and will show the following error on the Desktop Console. HP Sure Click Secure Browser will also not be usable.
Figure 2. Error text on the Desktop console: Micro-VM could not be loaded. Reboot the machine and if the condition persists contact support.
