Java 32 and 64 on 64 bit machines?
Hey guys, so I think I have been confusing myself lately with my java pushes through SCCM. Do I even need to be installing 64 bit versions of java? I think everyones uses iexplorer.exe*32 by default anyway right? I have never set anyone up specifically to use 64 bit IE and I dont think Firefox necessarily run in 64 bith either so am I waskign time trying to push java 32 bit to 32 bit machines and 64 to 64 bit machines? I think I may be messed up anyway becasue when I am pushing 64 to 64 bit machines they arent even using it unless they expicitly use IE 64 bit version correct? And I dont even present this to people. So Im thinking I should just have on basic 32 bit java push to 32 adn 64 bit. Whats the best advice you guys can give me on this?
Answers (5)
We have 64 bit PCs in our enterprise but we install the 32 bit version on our images. I don't recall that we've ever had an issue with this.
I think this would be more of a per-environment type of scenario. If you know that all of the computers (or at least the ones you are managing) are not even using the 64-bit version of Internet Explorer, that is usually one of the biggest places that they would be introduced to it, so I would not install the 64-bit version of Java. I use a mixture of 32-bit and 64-bit Internet Explorer depending on the duties that I am responsible for at the time, so I have both 32-bit and 64-bit Java installed.
M P is right in that it really is up to if you are using any 64-bit browsers or have applications/custom applications that require it. Most scenaiors will just require the 32-bit Java, even on a 64-bit Windows.
We have been using 32 bit for 2 years on our 64 bit machines, both classroom and staff. No one has ever complained they needed the 64bit version
Hmm, I didnt think about other stuff they may use other then IE that might utilize java on their machines. The reason I got mixed up was that I was only installing 64bit java on 64bit machines and the java control panel still said 6v31 or something, then I snapped.
The weird thing is the only reason I even looked at the java control panel is because with this last push of 7v17, whoever had 6v31 installed would get a prompt in IE to make changes per 6v31, which never happned before and I thought it was because this past push I pused 32 java to 32 and 64 bit machines.
I guess I just need to get a best practice going. It seems like pushing 7v17 didnt uninstall or overwrite 6v31 and it caused that version to do this pop up. So I was going to add 6v31 to my bat file that uninstalls java (newest version) before it installs the newest version.
add something like:
REM - Uninstalls any version of java 6 update 31 32 and 64 bit
C:\WINDOWS\system32\msiexec.exe /X {26A24AE4-039D-4CA4-87B4-2F83216031FF} /qn
C:\WINDOWS\system32\msiexec.exe /X {26A24AE4-039D-4CA4-87B4-2F86416031FF} /qn
Comments:
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java 7 does not seem to remove java 6 only removes older java 7 versions. - SMal.tmcc 11 years ago
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I also ran into the problem of Java 7 not uninstalling Java 6 when I was pushing out the new version of Java. I know in our environment we push out both 32 and 64 bit java to 64 bit machines just because I like to be complete. - dallama1985 11 years ago
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Were you getting a Java 6 v31 UAC pop up on all machines when they attempt to open IE? Thats what happened to me, I just need to uninstall that version and it works fine, but now I need to push out that uninstaller to everyone. - TBG_Associate 11 years ago
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I just didn't realize that Java 7 didn't uninstall 6. I thought that they usually did uninstall the previous version but not in this case. So I pushed out our batch file with an uninstall command that uninstall all previous versions of Java now. - dallama1985 11 years ago
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does your batch file call out every version that needs to be uninstalled or do you have a way to uninstall all versions at once? - TBG_Associate 11 years ago
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You cannot remove them all at once with a single command. You will have to create a batch file that remove each of the versions that you do not want on the computers. Is your current script working with the uninstall strings you posted previously? - M P 11 years ago
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It works for version 7 stuff I haven't tried it with version 6 yet but I think it should. - TBG_Associate 11 years ago
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I use the following command to uninstall every version, you can customize it for specific versions. I wish I could remember the IT Ninja article I found it on so I could give proper credit.
wmic product where "name like'Java%%'" call uninstall /nointeractive
Words of warning, this uninstalls anything with the name Java in it. The other method is to find the MD5 corresponding to each version of the software and use "msiexec /x MD5#" to uninstall the specific versions you have. - dallama1985 11 years ago-
Thank you for including the warning. This could be very harmful if used improperly. I would at least include another item in the criteria to check for "jre" in the "InstallLocation" or "PackageName". - M P 11 years ago
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This worked for me to uninstall all version of Java. Create a batch file that includes the following:
@ECHOOFF
cls
START /WAIT /MIN WMIC product where "Name LIKE '%%J2SE Runtime%%'" call uninstall /nointeractive
START /WAIT /MIN WMIC product where "Name LIKE '%%Java%%'" call uninstall /nointeractive
goto END
:END
exit 0 - KevinViolette 11 years ago