The verbiage used to control whether Side Channel Mitigations are enabled/disabled changed in version 17.0.0 from previous versions.
Prior to 17.0.0, the setting was labeled:
Disable side channel mitigations for Hyper-V enabled hosts
In 17.0.0, the option was changed to:
Side channel mitigations is not enable for Hyper-V enabled hosts
Yes - "enable" is missing the "d" at the end.
What does this option actually do?
It's more a rhetorical question - I know it's #2, but I'm playing the role of a confused customer.
This would be parity with earlier releases which begs the question - why was the verbiage changed in the first place?
There's additional context listed below that states:
Enabling side channel mitigations may cause performance degradation.
This is helpful context (FYI side channel should be hyphenated - "side-channel"), but does little to explain the checkbox next to the "Side channel mitigations is not enable for Hyper-V enabled hosts" option.
While the wording in versions prior to 17.0.0 isn't grammatically correct, it's still easier to understand than the change in version 17.0.0.
Both "side channel and Hyper-V enabled should be hyphenated - even with Hyper-V already being hyphenated:
Disable side-channel mitigations for Hyper-V-enabled hosts
Screenshots:
Version 17.0.0
Version 16.2.4
I also noticed this and it's rather confusing... even the tooltip discusses "enabling" and usually when one checks a check box, the box is considered "enabled" but the actual meaning of the box seems to continue to be disable, a double negative...
So... to "enable" side-channel mitigations I have to "disable" (uncheck) the checkbox?! Got it, clear as mud.
I am running VMWare Workstation Player V17.02. It does not display these settings for editing. VMWare Workstation apparently does but this is not me...
Why is this still the way it is? And the KB article still references the old verbiage so it wasn't until I found this thread that I even understood the option as it is written.
This really needs to be updated. I understand how these things happen - English isn't everyone's first language - but if you are going to make a change to an option in English please run it by a native speaker before release.