----- Original Message -----
From: "J Myron Smith" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Thursday, August 03, 2000 7:09 PM
Subject: Re: [JAVA3D] -verbose
> It seems your j3d.dll is not being found. Most likely you need to update
the
> JavaHome path in your registry.
> First do a search on j3d.dll and find out where it exist on your computer
> then run regedt32 and try changing your
> \HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.3 key
value
> JavaHome to wherever the j3d.dll does exist. For instance on my machine
its
> at D:\jdk1.3\JRE, this is where I installed the java 1.3 jdk.
Yesterday, in despair tracking mysterious failures and bugs in my Java
software, I tracked down every reference to "java" or "classpath" on my
WinNT machine, removed what I could in an orderly way and deleted the rest.
I then reinstalled the jdk1.3, j3d1.2, and Symantec Visual Cafe 4.
Not so unsophisticated or trusting anymore, I looked for the results of the
process. First, the installation littered 6 copies of java.exe around my
system. That included two VC4 versions, two in a c:\jdk1.3 hierarchy, one in
c:\Program Files\JavaSoft\JRE\1.3\bin, and finally, one in
c:\WINNT\System32.
The next necessary observation is that the Java3D support (for the
near-default installation - only changing the suggested vestigial 'jdk1.2'
to 'jdk1.3') gets installed only to the c:\jdk1.3 hierarchy.
The next little gotcha is that the normal structure of the NT environment
(Start->Settings->Control Panel->System->Environment) is that the
Administrator gets to set the system path (usually \WINNT;WINNT\System32.)
The User gets to specify his own path, such as c:\jdk1.3\bin, but this gets
APPENDED to Admin's path. Unless you're the Admin, you can't get
path=c:\jdk1.3\bin;C:\WINNT...
So when you stack all of these little gotchas together, the naive and
trusting user cds to the j3d demo application directory and executes java on
the classes there. What he gets (unknowingly, because he's never heard
of -verbose) is the java.exe in WINNT\System32, which, evidently by the
default installation, is married to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE / SOFTWARE /
JavaSoft / Java Runtime Environment registry entry and thus uses the runtime
files from the JavaSoft\JRE hierarchy, which have none of the Java3D dlls
nor jars. None of the examples run, but leave inscrutable error messages,
and he quits.
Maybe, if he has dogged determination, he becomes more sophisticated by
teaching himself about environment variables, system
administration, -verbose, directory structure, regedit, and he gets a lot
less trusting. But remains pissed that he has to edit his registry to fix
what would be easily fixable at installation.
Cheers,
Fred Klingener
Brock Engineering
Roxbury CT
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