IntelliJ debugger makes new JFrame() break Windows Vista Java

Question

My app works fine with Java 1.6 when I run it command line.

However, when I run it under the debugger in IntelliJ IDEA community edition 9, when it gets to the line

new JFrame();

the Vista reports the JVM fails with the message:

Java(TM) Platform SE binary has stopped working
A problem caused the program to stop working correctly. Please close the program.

This is under Windows Vista 64bit, Sun's JDK 1.6.0. Even more annoying this problem is intermittent, though common enough it makes testing ideas fairly easy.

I'd thought I'd ask if anyone had seen it before, or knew a solution? I'm about to go and try some different JVMs (including 7) to see if that solves it.

Answer 1

OK, I sorted this. I've left the answer here for anyone else with the same problem.

IntelliJ IDEA (most relevantly the debugger) was installed as a 32 bit app (in C:\Program Files(x86)). The JDK was a 64bit app (in C:\Program Files). It seems when it got to Swing code they weren't playing nicely together.

I installed the 32bit JDK (in addition to the 64 bit one) and changed the debugger settings to use the 32bit JDK when debugging this particular app.

This seemed to solve the problem.