Posted under Java
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Tags Bug, Gotcha, Tip
As I am running a Java development machine I want precise manual control of the versions of Java and all the related tools.
The Java auto updater runs regularly and nags about updating, but I want to turn it off. There is a control panel applet – “Java (32-bit)” – with an option under the updates tab to do this, however it does not work – if you uncheck the “check for updates automatically” tick box, it appears to save OK but when you close and re-open the applet and look again the value has not changed.
This is due to an apparently long standing Java bug – it does not run with admin privileges and so cannot change the value. It would be nice if it gave an error telling you that it did not work due to a permissions problem, but unfortunately it just fails completely silently.
This post here outlines various solutions to the problem. The accepted answer, which worked for me, is to find javacpl.exe, right click it, and run with admin privileges. The location of it in my case was not where the post suggested, even though I had done a default install, so you will probably need to search for it. In my case I had a couple of versions of it, one was for an old version of Java. The path for mine which I used successfully was C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin
This fixed the problem, and upon reopening the control panel applet (with or without admin privileges) the box was unticked.
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