SQL Developer JVM Fix
It’s amazing the moving parts in Oracle Database 11g, and the ones that I don’t use after installation for a while often reach out to teach me something new. That’s what happened when I went to launch SQL Developer on my Windows 7 Professional 64-bit installation.
I got the message Unable to find a Java Virtual Machine, as shown in the image below. It really means unable to find a 32-bit Java 5 or Java 6 (1.6.0_4+) SDK home. Although the installation appeared fine, it pointed the SQL Developer configuration file to an incompatible 64-bit Java 7 SDK.
You fix this error by following these steps:
- Open the
sqldeveloper.conf
file and check theSetJavaHome
parameter value. You find thesqldeveloper.conf
file in the following directory:
%ORACLE_HOME\sqldeveloper\sqldeveloper\bin |
- Install the 32-bit Java 6 (1.6.0_4+) SDK on the operating system if not installed already. You can check whether it’s installed by looking for it in the Program Files (x86) folder.
- Change the value of the
SetJavaHome
parameter to point to the new 32-bit Java 6 home directory (or folder). The following change to line 18 in thesqldeveloper.conf
file should fix it on your installation (provided that’s your version of the JVM).
18 | SetJavaHome C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jdk1.6.0_34 |
Hope this helps those who run into the same issue.