#270 Admin Required

[Chuck Hoffmann]

I am installing DrJava in a Windows 7 computer lab at Fort Lewis College and I can't get DrJava to run as a regular user. If I right click on the .exe and choose "Run as Administrator" it works great but of course the students are not administrators. Any thoughts on how I can get around this?

I am using JDK and JRE 6u21

Thanks!

[Robert Cartwright]

We do not have a Windows 7 machine in the JavaPLT lab, so I don't have much experience with Windows 7. We routinely run DrJava on Windows XP machines (using either the .exe file and .jar file) without any problems. The .exe file is simply a wrapper around a drjava jar file. You can also run the jar file on Windows. I suggest downloading the .jar file. Simply double-clicking on the jar file icon will run it provided that the registry settings for ".jar" have not been overwritten by installing another application that uses this extension since installing the JDK. Otherwise you can execute

java -jar <drjavajarfilename>

from the command prompt to start it.

I am surprised that .exe file requires administrative privileges on Windows 7 because it simply unwraps the jar file and executes a java -jar command on the unwrapped file. Perhaps, creating the unwrapped file is causing the problem. Is the .exe file on the Desktop? That is where I would put it.

DrJava is simply a .jar file that is processed as data by the Java Virtual Machine

[Mathias Ricken]

I have a Windows 7 machine at home, and DrJava works without any problems. If your systems are administered by some kind of IT department, perhaps they have put limitations on Java or network usage (DrJava uses the network, but only to communicate with itself on the same machine; this may still trigger firewall issues).

I will try running DrJava on my work laptop, which is a WIndows 7 machine that is administered by our IT. I'll see if I run into any problems there.

I suggest you talk to someone locally at your college. Sorry that I cannot be of more help.

[Mathias Ricken]

It tried running DrJava on my Windows 7 work laptop administered by our IT people, and it ran without any problems.

I suggest you consult your IT staff.

[Chuck Hoffmann]

Thanks for the posts:

I figured out that DrJava is using Users\Administrator as it's initial working directory. Students don't have access to this directory so it crashes under their logon. Now I need to figure out how to direct that initial working directory to their own local directory.

[Mathias Ricken]

You could try creating a Windows shortcut (right mouse click, New, Shortcut) or editing the shortcut if you already have one, and then set the "Start In" directory to

%USERPROFILE%

That starts in C:\Users\&lt;username>

You may also have inadvertently set the "last directory" that DrJava used to a directory that students cannot access. All students have individual .drjava configuration files (they should be in C:\Users\&lt;username> on Windows 7). You could tell your students to delete those files (losing all preference settings you have made), or to edit them to remove the line that starts with

last.dir =

It is a bit difficult to predict what needs to be done because we don't have any system information from you, and you haven't described how exactly DrJava fails for the students.

I hope these two suggestions will help.

[Mathias Ricken]

We need to know a little bit more about your system to help you. Please go to "Help -> About" on the menu and click on "System Properties". Then, click the "Copy System Properties" button and paste the results here in a new comment.

Thanks,
The DrJava Team