I'm having a bit of trouble getting my JAR files to properly execute, and I was wondering if I could get a bit of help. I'm using the BlueJ IDE to create my programs and JAR files. The JAR files get created correctly, however, when I try to execute them, my cursor flashes, says it's loading something, then nothing else happens. Can anyone offer me some suggestions as to why this is happening?

I am not familiar with BlueJ, nor have I ever used Vista, so what I say may be wrong, but you could try this.

Run RegEdit (I am not sure if Vista allows users to run RegEdit, but Windows XP does.) Go to
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.jar - it should have a value of "jarfile". Now go to
HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\jarfile\shell\open\command
and check the value. Mine is
"C:\Program Files\Java\jre1.6.0_03\bin\javaw.exe" -jar "%1" %*

Yours may say java.exe (which is just the console-based version of javaw.exe) or it may run some BlueJ-specific executable.

If the above value looks wrong on your machine, try and fix it (take a backup first.)

Try running that command line from your Command Prompt window. If that works, it should also work when you double-click a jar file in Explorer. Let us know how you get on.