SOLVED VISTA JAVA 1.6.X 1.6.15 BROKEN JAVA CONSOLE IE8/FIREFOX HANGS

Question

I recently inherited a problem where JAVA was broken on Vista Home Premium whenever you hit the java test page
www.*java*.com/en/download/help/*test*vm.xml*
the browser for both IE8 and FireFox 3.5.2 would just hang which required a forced kill, trying to start the java console through the vista control pannel, for the latest build just failed 1.6.15.
Trying to reinstall JAVA just failed, trying to downgrade JAVA  failed trying other possible incompatibilities upgrading to vista SP2 had no effect.
Searching the web I found a number of hints then hit on what was the issue in that there was not one thing wrong but the JAVA install was broken in a number of places and so the problem was multi dimensional. The first task was figuring this out then gluing the pieces together
*If your control panel for JAVA when clicked on barfs a warning ending with "{color:#ff0000}*com.sun.deploy.panel.ControlPanel"{color}* you need to fix this so you can easily access the JAVA configuration parameters
1) First get the java console working put the following code into a file called in mycase javaconsole.bat amend it to suit your version/location of the javaw.exe file
cd C:\"Program Files"\Java\jre6\bin javaw.exe
{color:#0000ff} .\javaw -Xbootclasspath/a:..\lib\deploy.jar -Duser.home="%HOMEDRIVE%%HOMEPATH%" -Dsun.java2d.noddraw=true com.sun.deploy.panel.ControlPanel{color}
This was based of the following thread, whats in blue is a single line
http://forums.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5372196
2) Create short-cut, put this on you desk top double click and say yes to whatever UAC security issue Vista pop's up and console now comes up. The vista control panel icon will remain broken hence the batch script hack to access it
3) Next piece is the java settings controlling the network, should java read the proxy settings from the browser itself FireFox/IE8. This needs to be set to {color:#ff0000}*direct*{color} if using a home network, that has no proxy infrastructure. This information was based of this following thread
http://forums.sun.com/thread.jspa?threadID=5367053
PS IE8 no longer has the JAVA enabled as option in it's own advanced section
4) The above thread has the solution solved at the end as the :-
"It was the default setting for the 'Network Proxy Settings' in the java control panel.
The default setting 'Use browser settings' did not work for us.
We changed it to 'Direct Connection' and now java works correctly."
{color:#ff0000}*HOWEVER READ ALL THE ABOVE THREAD AND IT MENTIONS "the next-gen plugin."*{color}
This is the last key in the puzzle as now you have the control panel working through the batch script also {color:#0000ff}*DISABLE the "Java Pluggin enabled the next generation Java Plug-in" under the security advanced tab*
You will now have a working system for VISTA JAVA
{color}
Edited by: rmccorkl on Aug 23, 2009 11:25 AM

Answer 1

jre 1.6.0_10 beta installtion fixes this problem!