[Ham-Computers] Java update problem (Jim Hill)

[John and Linda Miller]

Jim, I don't know which apps contain much if any Java, nor do I know how to find out.  I wish I did.  Aaron Hsu once told me that "many and various" wouldn't be far off.  It would appear that some of the cell phones may contain more of it that PCs; for example, for Android/Maemo, Firefox 4 Beta is preparing for HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript for fast, powerful mobile apps.

I think that one test for Java is your XP that does not have it installed.  Apps that run on that machine, that are also installed on your other two machines, would obviously not require Java.  I think there may be two more Java tests for an XP on a machine known to have Java installed.  

One test may be to select Start/Control Panel, change to Classic View in left panel, look for Java icon, and if present double click, select the Update tab, and see whether you have Auto Update on or off depending upon your preferences.  Click other tabs or not as you wish.

Another test may be to select Start/Control Panel/Add-Remove, allow the time for that page to populate, and then see how many, if any, Java (or even Sun) are shown.  Ideally, only JRE 6, Update 22 should be there on two of your machines.

If you don't have the Java icon in Classic View (as above), but do have JRE 6, Update 22 in Add-Remove (as above) there probably is a corruption.  In my case, it took Revo to correct it, then I cleaned out all the Java and even Sun folders (goodness do they hide), and finally downloaded a fresh install of JRE 6, Update 22 and was OK.

I might add that on IT matters in general, anyone without experience probably has no business in the Windows Registry, and if you can't figure it out, or don't want to, check out www.liveperson.com/saima and see whether she can help.

If in Start/Control Panel/Add-Remove you have more than JRE 6, Update 22 then you may be carrying excess Java baggage you may not need.  I'm hedging with the "may" word because if you have some really old routines that you still run, some of that baggage may be needed or those routines may not run at all, and the awful part of it is that the publisher can't/won't help you because they don't know who wrote what in that language, so you really never know.  Java was not backward compatible.

On one XP I had nearly 1 GB in just Java (seven iterations), taking up hard drive space.  Some were "ancient."  One was "newer."  One was JRE 6 Update XX.  I asked some friends in IT for input, and we concluded that "ancient" came with the machine, "newer" was one installed by a pharmacy program my wife once used, 

So I took a backup of all "ancient" and "newer," uninstalled all of them one at a time to see what would still work including the JRE 6 Update XX because I had no idea how well it was installed and was going to purge the entire XP of anything closely resembling Java and Sun, including the Registry, powered down to be sure I was rid of it, and installed JRE 6, Update XX from scratch, using an offline install option so I had a backup file.

Now I wish I had dragged my feet and kept JRE 6, Update XX off longer and done more testing.  If I can find time, I may yet do that.  I know several developers who do not permit Java on any of their machines.  I'd hate to be doing all this reinstalling and then find out I had to need to do so!

>From my research it looks as if three things may corrupt a Java update:

1. The operator, who, during the update, does not know that the last green bar on the gauge incrementing from left to right takes forever and a day to get from 99 to 100 percent.  The op, not watching the hard drive LED, or not listening in a quiet room for a slight ticking of the hard drive, may break off the update too soon, and cause corruption.

2. The possibility that the Windows Installer is a problem.  I'm still working on this one because it seems that if that were a problem, you should see various other installer issues.

3. The possibility of marginal code written by Java (Oracle) for the Windows installer.  I am not sure how you would ever determine this.

Please share what you learn.

John