Top Most Eclipse No Java Virtual Machine was found Windows JRE JDK 64 32 bit Error

One of my reader was installing Eclipse in his Windows 7 x86 machine and emailed me about this error "A java Runtime Environment (JRE) or Java Development kit (JDK) must be available in order to run Eclipse. No Java virtual machine was found". Before getting into details and trying to find root cause and solution of Eclipse Java Virtual Machine not found error, let's see some background about Eclipse. Eclipse is a popular Java IDE, which assist on coding, debugging and running Java program, but key point is, Eclipse itself need Java to launch and run. By default Eclipse scan your PATH and look for any JRE, if it founds suitable JRE than it runs otherwise it throws "A java Runtime Environment (JRE) or Java Development kit (JDK) must be available in order to run Eclipse. No Java virtual machine was found". Now, In order to install JRE, you can either download JDK or a JRE from Oracle's Java download site. For Java programmers, I suggest to install JDK because it comes with bundled JRE.  Once you install JDK, its good to set your JAVA_HOME environment variable, and subsequently include JAVA_HOME/bin into your PATH. JAVA_HOME contains "java" command line utility which is what required by Eclipse to run. Alternatively you can install JRE on your windows 7 machine, and include its bin directory into PATH that contains javaw command, which can also run Eclipse or any Java program. By the way there is subtle difference between java and javaw, which is worth knowing. You can get "No Java virtual machine was found" error during fresh install or reinstalling Eclipse, but root cause always lies in PATH which is quite obvious with error itself.

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