Eclipse just does not start up

Question

I recently uninstalled and then reinstalled Java on my machine and ever since, Eclipse just does not start up. I find this weird, because I uninstalled a different version of Java from the one that I use. I modified the eclipse.ini file, by adding the following:

-vm

C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre1.5.0_15\bin\javaw.exe

This made no difference. I then tried to reset the JAVA_HOME variable and I tried both these things again, after reinstalling (well, unzipping) Eclipse again. None of this made any difference, which is why I'm posting this question. Can someone help me out here?

Answer 1

You need to make sure that the path to javaw.exe is in %PATH% environment variable. Basically:

%PATH% = %PATH%;c:\path\to\jre\bin

You can configure this in the environment variables configuration and you can verify this by opening a command prompt and test if java is recognized as a command from inside an arbitrary path.

The %JAVA_HOME% should by the way point to the JDK's /bin folder, not the one of the JRE. Regardless, this environment variable is ignored by Eclipse since it comes with its own compiler.

Answer 2

You may also try eclipse.exe -vm "c:\path\to\jre\bin"

Answer 3

I uninstalled all the versions of Java I had installed and installed them again. I also deleted Eclipse and downloaded that again. Following this, I edited the eclipse.ini file to include the path the javaw.exe, as I mentioned in the question. Everything works fine now.