Have you ever been watching a movie and Windows will throw its UAC screen up busting you out of full-screen during your movie alerting you that Java has an update? It’s happened to me.
So you relent and you take it upon yourself to be diligent and actually update Java, you tell UAC it’s fine and to proceed. And then the Java installer comes up asking you to accept some terms of service before the update is downloaded and installed. But then. This.
Now what? What can you do? The little Java icon in the task tray is gone and it won’t pop up again for a few hours. There is no solution to this problem, except for downloading the new version of Java directly. Or you can wait again until the prompt comes back up. That’ll work too.
Happens to me on XP and 7, and I agree it’s really annoying. It’s like, “Hey Java… you’re the one who bugged me in the first place about this, now you can’t even do what you were squawking about???”
FYI, though, besides downloading the update yourself, you can open java’s controls in the control panel and manually kick off an update [attempt].
I’m using a vista machine and I have repeatedly tried going into the control panel, clicking on Java, then under the ‘update’ tab clicking on ‘update now’. It then still gives this same error message “Failed to download required installation files.” And when I have tried to download it directly from java’s site and not use the updater it says that it’s not a valid win32 application.
I don’t know under who’s responsibility this would even fall, Microsoft’s or java’s, to design a way out. But, you’d think somebody would have rectified it by now.
I wonder how many more months we can go without the old java version’s effectiveness becoming problematic (???) because it doesn’t look like some of us are going to be able to update java anytime soon. Or at least on some of the vista machines out here.
You might try uninstalling Java completely or possibly attempting to install the 64-bit version.
Having the same issue. Went to control panel and tried to updated but failed. Win7 Ultimate x32.
I’m trying to figure out why I installed Java in the first place.
I’m not too worried about the software, it’s the daily popups demanding admin authorisation to install the update (that proceed to fail daily as well) that are getting to me. No matter how many times I try to run the update from my taskbar, it fails.
How can I fix this?
The prompts to update being the major complaint at my organisation (mostly Vista Business, some Win7Pro), my solution was to disable the automatic update feature of Java using regedit for the Admin accounts, then just set Java to never update on the user accounts.
HKLM>Software>Microsoft>Windows>Current Version>Run
I routinely manually check for an updated version from Sun and if necessary deploy it from a file server, using the full installer. So far this seems to be working although I’d like to automate it, which I might investigate via scripting (we’re not using AD in this environment so can’t push it via GP).
Thanks. This is a much better solution than I would have come up with.
No, waiting for it to come back doesn’t work. EVERY TIME, I get this “file failed” message. You’d think Java would figure it out!
I’m a new bee in all this electronic stuff but I like the rest of you can”t figure out how in the world to download or is it upload this JAVA THING. Can someone give me the scoop in laymens terms. Thanks
You really just follow the link mentioned in the post above and download Java.
Wow, I emailed oracle and they don’t care, the worst thing that could have happened to the consumer was when oracle bought sun systems and then disabled all of there sites to where none of them work! Java updates will not work and you will not be able to download a file to re-install that isn’t corrupt! A direct download from remote access from another computer is all I can see that will work! Shhh don’t tell them or they will make it to where that won’t work either!
Thanks Ryan! I’ve had this issue for over a frickin’ year, and it’s been driving me up the wall. I have windows 7 x 64.
I followed your link above and I was skeptical, since I have gone to Java’s website many times. To my surprise and delight, it worked!
Thanks-
I manage a computer lab and when it pops up during students taking a test it can be super annoying. One thing I have noticed is that I only get the errors when the students are logged into a standard (non admin) user account. If I’m on an admin account when it pops up, it works fine. However asking for an admin password (and then entering it) on a standard account – and then not working, is quite annoying. We’re using Win 7.
Much bigger of a pin when you take one Java update and multiply it by 40 computers.