XAMPP + Tomcat + JRE - How to upgrade JDK/JRE from 1.5.0_20 to 1.6.0_27

Question

I would like to upgrade my JDK/JRE that came with XAMPP from the original 1.5.0_20 to 1.6.0_27 because of application compatibility problems (there's an application which was compiled with version 6).

I stopped Tomcat service, renamed the original "jre" folder in XAMPP directory, and copied a whole jre directory with version 1.6.0_27 version in it, taking care that it also has a "server" subdir. So I did it with this method: How to change java version on Tomcat 6 with Xampp, BUT it didn't work, the Tomcat service couldn't start with the newer JRE version (6), and I found this in "jakarta_service_20110911.log" file:

[2011-09-11 04:33:14] [info] Starting service...  
[2011-09-11 04:33:14] [174  javajni.c] [error] The specified module could not be found.  
[2011-09-11 04:33:14] [994  prunsrv.c] [error] Failed creating java C:\xampp\tomcat\jre\bin\server\jvm.dll

I even tried to copy tcnative-1.dll like written here, but it didn't solve the problem. I had to copy jre 1.5.0_20 back, so put everything to its original state, and then the server started - but with the earlier JVM version... :(

Can you help me?
Thanks!

Answer 1

If you redefine the variable for JAVA_HOME to an actual install path (i.e., C:\java_1.6....) that has been installed using the Java installer, you should be able to safely install a newer Java version without moving subdirectories around.

Specific instructions for XAMPP are available here.