Microsoft Java Virtual Machine

[rookie1010]

Hello
Can you guys tell me what a Java Virtual Machine does. I was trying to install this software and i got the message that

"The installer needs a newer version of the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine"

how do i find out what version of the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine do i have?

i tried to find a link for the MS Java Virtual Machine, and came across a site which states that it is not possible to download MS Java Virtual Machine since there is some sort of legal wrangling between Sun and Microsoft.

 

[Nocturnal]

Just go to www.sun.com and download it from there. MS no longer provides the JVM.

 

[NorthernSink23]

The Sun Java hangs for me a lot and uses tons of memory (70MB) just playing Yahoo games (Spades).

 

[Nothinman]

The Sun Java hangs for me a lot and uses tons of memory (70MB) just playing Yahoo games (Spades).

Then complain to Sun, I think IBM has a JRE too but I'm not sure how well it works. Sun sued MS for making a JVM that wasn't compliant with Java standards and they won, MS is no longer allowed to develop or distribute their JVM and at this point it's several major revisions old so you'll probably be lucky to get recent things to run in it.

 

[ncage]

Originally posted by: abhatia
The Sun Java hangs for me a lot and uses tons of memory (70MB) just playing Yahoo games (Spades).

Java is known to use a TON of memory. Its just the nature of the beast. Any java programs you use tend to use tons of memory. For example, my favorite bittorent program is azureus but it does use a TON of memory.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

The Sun Java hangs for me a lot and uses tons of memory (70MB) just playing Yahoo games (Spades).

Then complain to Sun, I think IBM has a JRE too but I'm not sure how well it works. Sun sued MS for making a JVM that wasn't compliant with Java standards and they won, MS is no longer allowed to develop or distribute their JVM and at this point it's several major revisions old so you'll probably be lucky to get recent things to run in it.

IBM does have a java implementation but they are not free to distribute it because of legal issues with sun (I believe). It's used mostly for server products so I doubt they put much effort into making it play nice with browsers.

You might try BEAs jvm as an alternative. It's also geared towards servers but I've got it on my windows machine right now and it seems fine.

 

[willstay]

It is sad that Microsoft doesn't distribute JVM anymore. Sun's JVM for browser applet sucks (specially when browser is MSIE and java is Sun's). And default version of XP doesn't come with MS JVM. Installing SP1 installs JVM presto!! But when you install SP2, JVM is removed again.

Interestingly, I found a version of JVM that works for XP even after installaion of SP2. I am keeping this file here for few days msjavx86. I don't exactly recall but I got this file from Visual Studio or .NET installation cd.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

The Sun Java hangs for me a lot and uses tons of memory (70MB) just playing Yahoo games (Spades).

Then complain to Sun, I think IBM has a JRE too but I'm not sure how well it works. Sun sued MS for making a JVM that wasn't compliant with Java standards and they won, MS is no longer allowed to develop or distribute their JVM and at this point it's several major revisions old so you'll probably be lucky to get recent things to run in it.

Or complain to Yahoo. It could be a symptom of the applet and not the JRE.

 

[ncage]

Originally posted by: willstay
It is sad that Microsoft doesn't distribute JVM anymore. Sun's JVM for browser applet sucks (specially when browser is MSIE and java is Sun's). And default version of XP doesn't come with MS JVM. Installing SP1 installs JVM presto!! But when you install SP2, JVM is removed again.

Interestingly, I found a version of JVM that works for XP even after installaion of SP2. I am keeping this file here for few days msjavx86. I don't exactly recall but I got this file from Visual Studio or .NET installation cd.

Actually its not sad and its eactly the reason microsoft got sued over java. They created their own version of java which wasn't compatable to Sun's implementation.T They were adding their own extensions, ect... What do you think Microsoft would do it sun created thier own version of .Net for solaris? Hmm they would probably get suid. Microsoft has done this with a lot of things in the past but they seem to be getting better (JScript compared to JavaScript).

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: ncage
Actually its not sad and its eactly the reason microsoft got sued over java. They created their own version of java which wasn't compatable to Sun's implementation.T They were adding their own extensions, ect... What do you think Microsoft would do it sun created thier own version of .Net for solaris? Hmm they would probably get suid. Microsoft has done this with a lot of things in the past but they seem to be getting better (JScript compared to JavaScript).

There's nothing wrong with writing your own Java classes. I think Sun's fear was that developers would use Microsoft's classes extensively, limiting their claims to "cross-platform" capabilities.

Microsoft has already submitted a great deal of .NET to the ECMA, and open source implementations are already under way (Mono).

Now, the biggest problems with the Microsoft JVM were a) it was buggy, b) it had no error handling and c) it was never updated to support Java 2 (versions >= 1.2). That said, it was fast as hell for Windows users, and Sun's plug-in, while improving, still can't touch it for speed.

 

[kamper]

D@mn straight. I'm glad sun got ms to keep their filthy paws off of java! The loss of desktop integration is regretable but well worth it.

Edit: this was in response to ncage's post

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: MrChad

Originally posted by: ncage
Actually its not sad and its eactly the reason microsoft got sued over java. They created their own version of java which wasn't compatable to Sun's implementation.T They were adding their own extensions, ect... What do you think Microsoft would do it sun created thier own version of .Net for solaris? Hmm they would probably get suid. Microsoft has done this with a lot of things in the past but they seem to be getting better (JScript compared to JavaScript).

There's nothing wrong with writing your own Java classes. I think Sun's fear was that developers would use Microsoft's classes extensively, limiting their claims to "cross-platform" capabilities.

Microsoft has already submitted a great deal of .NET to the ECMA, and open source implementations are already under way (Mono).

Now, the biggest problems with the Microsoft JVM were a) it was buggy, b) it had no error handling and c) it was never updated to support Java 2 (versions >= 1.2). That said, it was fast as hell for Windows users, and Sun's plug-in, while improving, still can't touch it for speed.

Adding classes is one thing. Adding classes to the core api is another. I don't know exactly what Microsoft did but I imagine it was something like adding java.* packages which is directly contrary to the spec. It would have turned out to be Java and Microsoft Java as two seperate products. Of course, it's just about the same situation now with .NET but at least there's no confusion and no licensing issues between the two platforms.

 

[Nothinman]

It would have turned out to be Java and Microsoft Java as two seperate products.

It already was, there were already a decent number of applets that worked with the MS JVM but not with the Sun JVM and that's why Sun sued them. Java barely works cross-platform as is, throw in incompatible JVMs and it gets many times worse.

 

[willstay]

Originally posted by: MrChad
There's nothing wrong with writing your own Java classes. I think Sun's fear was that developers would use Microsoft's classes extensively, limiting their claims to "cross-platform" capabilities.

This true. Microsoft was already enforcing their own version of Java for Windows applications (com.ms.wfc.app.* etc packages).

It is also true, JVM got stuck at version 1.2. But since more than 75% of browsers are MSIE and given that Sun's JRE sucks @ MSIE, there is no point developing applets any more (Ironically, web applet is the only place where I like Java in). Now given that there is no good scope for Java for web browsers, I don't see why one should develop anything in Java if it is to run in Windows natively.

The only Java I do these days are for mobile devices.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: kamper
Adding classes is one thing. Adding classes to the core api is another. I don't know exactly what Microsoft did but I imagine it was something like adding java.* packages which is directly contrary to the spec. It would have turned out to be Java and Microsoft Java as two seperate products. Of course, it's just about the same situation now with .NET but at least there's no confusion and no licensing issues between the two platforms.

I think it was the Windows Foundation Class packages. Take a look at their Java development guide, and you can see why Sun might get upset.

 

[NorthernSink23]

Originally posted by: willstay
It is sad that Microsoft doesn't distribute JVM anymore. Sun's JVM for browser applet sucks (specially when browser is MSIE and java is Sun's). And default version of XP doesn't come with MS JVM. Installing SP1 installs JVM presto!! But when you install SP2, JVM is removed again.

Interestingly, I found a version of JVM that works for XP even after installaion of SP2. I am keeping this file here for few days msjavx86. I don't exactly recall but I got this file from Visual Studio or .NET installation cd.

Hey this works perfectly. Thanks.

 

[Loki726]

Technically, what the jvm does is act as an emulator so that precompiled java programs will work on any platform.

 

[Nocturnal]

I've never encountered any problems with using Sun's JVM. I guess having 1GB of memory helps as well.

 

[Woody419]

I never had a problem with Sun's JVM with 512 Mb ram.

I would suggest a complete uninstall of the Java runtime (Add - Remove Programs)
Cleaning the registry using jv16 Powertools 1.3.0.195 (last uncrippled Freeware version)
Scandisk
Defrag
Install the latest JVM from Sun

 

[Nothinman]

Technically, what the jvm does is act as an emulator so that precompiled java programs will work on any platform.

There's no emulation, java bytecode is the same on any platform which is why the virtual machine is needed to run it.

 

[boran]

the JVM acts as a JIT (Just In Time) compiler, which compiles the bytecode into native OS calls.

 

[willstay]

Amount of RAM has no impact on Sun's JRE. The fact that during those days, Visual Java IDE's robustness kept me sticking to Microsoft Java. Even today, though there is equally good Sun's IDE Studio One, working on it feels like crawling snail. I particularly had problems on compatibility of ActionEvent class where I use it to dispatchEvents between different pop-up applet windows. It works fine with MS JVM but not with Sun's JRE. Another serious incompatibility I faced in implementation of Canvas class and the way contents are drawn using double buffering technique. I think I have not been biased to use MS version of specific Java writing technique but to my dismay, it simply doesn't work as it should with Sun's JRE. Recently, I find this has been sorted out in Sun's JRE. But again, there are still few things that keep me bugging.

Had there been Sun One Studio then, I might have seen things from a different perspective and blamed MS JVM instead.

Sun took MS to court for they started customising Java in MS ways. But there are Sun specific packages too like sun.net.*. Well MS IDE supported this package natively and I always used it for socket programming within Microsoft Java domain.

 

[kamper]

Originally posted by: boran
the JVM acts as a JIT (Just In Time) compiler, which compiles the bytecode into native OS calls.

Not necessarily. A JIT compiler is not a required part of a jvm.

 

[rookie1010]

how do i find out what version of the Java Virtual Machine do i have?

 

[manly]

The problem with MS Java wasn't the additional APIs they developed, but standard APIs they refused to implement.