Salesforce Force.com IDE Java failure

Today I attempted to install the Force.com standalone IDE on my Windows 7 64-bit laptop in order to make some Apex class changes in our sandbox and production orgs on Salesforce. I had recently formatted and reinstalled Windows 7 so going through this process again was supposed to not be a problem. Famous last words!

First, I needed a Java JRE. I fired up Firefox 4.0.1 and went to the  Get Java website. I allowed the site to detect my needs, downloaded the setup, ran it and everything looked good.

Next I downloaded and extracted the setup files for the Force.com standalone IDE for Windows 7 64-bit. When I attempted to run the setup executable, I was confronted with an error message as seen in the following screenshot. The error went something like this:

JVM Terminated. Exit Code=-1

After doing some Googling and not really finding a good solution I decided that this must be something to do with the Java environment. I decided to go back and try installing both the 32-bit and 64-bit versions of the JRE manually. After installing the 64-bit version of JRE-6u25 I tried the setup executable again. This time everything worked perfectly.

JRE manual download and installation 32-bit and 64-bit

Come to find out, Firefox is running as a 32-bit application. The Java site detected I needed the 32-bit version of the JRE. After be explicit about downloading and installing the 64-bit version of the JRE, the 64-bit version of the Salesforce Force.com standalone IDE installed without a hitch.

Hope this may help someone else out with the same issue. Sometimes running a 64-bit is a real pain when you mix environments. Oh well, the price of progress…. ?

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