am very new to java and would like to know how to create a path. i know how to get to enviroment variable but what to enter in the boxes is a mystery. i dowloaded "The Java SE Development Kit 6 (JDK 6)" please help! thank you.
Setting JAVA_HOME will not help. You need to add the 'bin' directory of your JDK installation to the PATH.
So, if you installed your JDK in C:\jdk1.6.0_03 for example, you will have to add this to the PATH:
C:\jdk1.6.0_03\bin
Note that the entries in PATH are separated by ; on Windows. So you need to add ;C:\jdk1.6.0_03\bin to the end of the current PATH (if your JDK is indeed installed in C:\jdk1.6.0_03).