Uninstalling Java Not Working

[Jon Smithson]

Hey everyone!

I'm a bit new to the forums, so please humor me.

Recently, I was trying to get started with Java3D, but no matter what I did, it threw an UnsatisfiedLinkError. In an attempt to fix this, I uninstalled my JRE, SDK, and the 3D api. Everything was going fine and dandy, until I reinstalled the SDK, the JRE, and the 3D api and almost everything stopped working! I could compile and run programs from the command line, but online applets and games, along with Eclipse, my favorite IDE, have stopped working.

At this point, I wasn't not panicking. I mean, all I need to do is uninstall everything and start fresh, right? I figured that installing the SDK before the JRE had caused the problem. So I uninstalled the 3D api and the SDK (again!), but for some reason, as I uninstalled the JRE, it gave me this error:

Error 1723. There is a problem with this Windows Installer package. A DLL required for this install to complete could not be run. Contact your support personnel or package vendor.

I've tried everything to fix this problem, and I'm out of ideas. Hopefully some of you wise code ranchers can help me with my problem!

Additional info:

I did delete a bunch of stuff from the Java folders after getting this error in an attempt to manually uninstall it. I'm currently copying these files back from another machine.

On "Add or Remove Programs," this is listed as "Java (TM) 6 Update 21". I tried the 64 bit version, but applets and Web Launch programs still don't work.

I'm running Windows 7 64 bit.

[Jan Cumps]

Welcome to JavaRanch.
Please check your private messages for an administrative matter.

[Jon Smithson]

Ok, thank you. I took care of that.

[Jesper de Jong]

Welcome to JavaRanch.

If you Google for "java error 1723", you'll find that you're not the first one who gets this error...

UnsatisfiedLinkError means that Java can't find a native library (a DLL, if you're running Windows) that it needs. Re-installing Java and Java3D is most likely not going to solve that problem. You just need to make sure that the native libraries that are necessary for Java3D can be found. You can do that by specifying the system property java.library.path on the command line when you start your program. It must point to the directory that contains the necessary DLLs.

java -Djava.library.path=C:\some\directory com.mypackage.MyProgram

[Jon Smithson]

Thank you for the help. I'll keep looking for the solution that works.