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We recently had a situation come up at work where a few of our users who do a lot of work in Banner found that they could no longer launch the app. Instead of the login screen, they were getting a blank window in Internet Explorer. We use Java 1.5.0.12 to run Banner 7, and the VM itself seemed to launch fine, but then nothing happened. The problem only started after we upgraded everyone from Java JRE 1.5.0.11 to 12 last week, so we started by assuming the new version of Java was conflicting with something.

An analysis of common programs yielded Google Desktop as a common thread, so we tried uninstalling that. Immediately, Java worked great and Banner loaded immediately. A Google search for ‘java 1.5.0.12 crashes google desktop’ showed that the problem is not limited to Banner only. In all instances we’ve had of the problem, a quick removal of the Google Desktop (including all settings and indexes) has fixed everything.

As a side note, the irony factor on this one is pretty significant. After all, most of the users who had the Google Desktop had gotten it as a result of the Java Update Scheduler, which had offered them 1.6 (the actual latest version of Java) and had installed (you guessed it) Google Desktop with the Java update as a default option. Several of our users wrote angry comments in the field Google provided with their uninstaller, and I can’t say I blame them. Also, it’s another example of why IT needs to keep tabs on and limit the proliferation of user-installed software.

1.5.0.12, 1.6.3, banner, banner 7, banner crash, google, google desktop, java, java crash, jre

Recently at work, I had to come up with a way to uninstall any installed versions of Java on our AD managed systems, then install versions 1.5.11 and 1.4.2.12 (the latest versions of 1.5 and 1.4, essentially). Luckily, Alan found a site that directly addresses this issue, and I was able to quickly grab all the upgrade codes for the previous Java MSIs. Armed with this info, I quickly inserted all the upgrade codes into the 1.5.11 JRE MSI, which I had extracted from the setup .exe bootstraper (it’s in %username%\Local Settings\Application Data\Sun\Java\jre1.5.0_11). I tested it with 1.5.10 on my system, and it upgraded it like a charm.

Since the upgrade code for each sub-version is different (why, Sun, why?), you have to paste about 20 codes in one by one, which is a major pain. As a service, I’ve created an MSI that is only the upgrade codes. Just paste the upgrade table of this MSI into the Sun Java one (I’m not providing a hacked MSI on this site, that would just be stupid), and you’re good to go, and you can avoid the 20 stupid table entries. Here’s the file:

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java, jre, uninstall java, automatic uninstall java, MSI, AD, group policy, active directory, sun java