Tomcat is not running even though JAVA_HOME path is correct

Question

When I am trying to run tomcat using startup.bat I get the following error,

The JAVA_HOME environment variable is not defined correctly
This environment variable is needed to run this program
NB: JAVA_HOME should point to a JDK not a JRE

But then I try C:\>echo %java_home% and I get the following result

C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_25\bin

I have even tried setting JAVA_HOME manually to system variable list, but this issue remains.

What can I do to solve it?

I am using Windows 7.

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Update

After setting a new system variable named JAVA_HOME and setting its path to "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_25\bin\", I tried the start up script again and this time I get a new error.

D:\Work\apache-tomcat-6.0.35\bin>startup.bat
Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_25"" was unexpected at this time.

Any idea what this error means?

I even tried setting the path to "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_25\"(that is without bin) but same error occurs.

Solution 1

Try installing java somewhere else - in a directory without spaces. Set again the JAVA_HOME variable and try again. I remember Tomcat had some problems on Window XP with spaces if any variables it was using while starting contained spaces. Maybe it's similar with Windows 7.

I remember I had to change some lines in Tomcat java classes which were handling Tomcat startup.

@Edit: Luciano beat me to noticing it but you should also remove bin from JAVA_HOME

@Edit: I also remember that another fix (didn't test it myself, though) was to set JAVA_HOME to the shorthand version e.g. C:\Progra~1\Java\jdk1.6.0_25

Solution 2

I think that your JAVA_HOME should point to

C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_25

instead of

C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_25\bin

That is, without the bin folder.

UPDATE

That new error appears to me if I set the JAVA_HOME with the quotes, like you did. Are you using quotation marks? If so, remove them.

Solution 3

Avoid semicolon in the end of any environment variables... from JAVA_HOME or JRE_HOME

JAVA_HOME=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_25\bin

and

JRE_HOME=C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_32\jre

should be like as shown...

Solution 4

I had Win 8 x86 installed. My Path variable had entry C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_31\bin and I also had following variables:

• JAVA_HOME : C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_31;
• JRE_HOME : C:\Program Files\Java\jre6;

My tomcat is installed at C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\apache-tomcat-7.0.41

And still it did not worked for me.

I tried by replacing Program Files in those paths with Progra~1. I also tried by moving JAVA to another folder so that full path to it does not contain any spaces. But nothing worked.

Finally environment variables that worked for me are:

• Kept path variable as is with full Program Files i.e. C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_31\bin
• JAVA_HOME : C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_31
• Deleted JRE_HOME

So what I did is removed JRE_HOME and removed semicolon at the end of JAVA_HOME. I think semicolon should not be an issue, though I removed it. I am giving these settings, since after a lot of googling nothing worked for me and suddenly these seem to work. You can replicate and see if it works for you.

This also worked for Win 7 x64, where

• Path variable contained C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.7.0_17\bin
• JAVA_HOME is set to C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.7.0_17 (without semicoln)

Please tell me why this worked, I know removing JRE_HOME was weird solution, but any guesses what difference it makes?

Solution 5

Remove the 'bin' from JAVA_HOME. That solves the issue.

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