I wish to run eclipse for C++ on Vista but I absolutely do not want to run the JRE install. Is there any place where I can get a JRE in a zip that I can just dump in the eclipse folder and have it work?
No, it can not be done the way you described it. The JRE needs to be installed using the Installer. Why would you be so afraid of installing JRE on your machine? Without it, Eclipse won't work, as it is by itself a Java application and runs in a JVM.
I guess you should take a look on Apache Harmony. I beleive it could be just unpacked to the standalone directory. After that Eclipse could be launched with -vm PATH_TO_JVM option. (In theory)
Hope this helps.
The browser add on can be disabled per browser, you can copy and re-set your PATH variable and the JAVA_HOME variable, and you can disable the updater in the Java app in the Control Panel of Windows. Registry entries are generally harmless but not too hard to remove.
Also, you could just uninstall after you use it.
You can run Eclipse by copying the JRE into the eclipse/jre directory (wiki documentation). The JRE is distributed with the Java JDK (/path/jdk1.6xxx/jre). The JDK uses an installer, but you can just copy this directory from another machine, install and uninstall the JDK or whatever.
The IBM Development Kit for Eclipse is exactly what you ask for. Eclipse with an JRE bundled in ready to use.
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk/eclipse/
(For the record it is an IBM JVM).
Registration is necessary (urgh).