JDK-6610393 : JSE 1.6.0_02 "JRE Auto-Download" setting is grayed out for non admin XP users
  • Type: Bug
  • Component: deploy
  • Sub-Component: webstart
  • Affected Version: 6,6u2
  • Priority: P2
  • Status: Resolved
  • Resolution: Fixed
  • OS: windows_xp,windows_vista
  • CPU: x86
  • Submitted: 2007-09-27
  • Updated: 2010-12-02
  • Resolved: 2008-05-01
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JDK 6 JDK 7
6u4 b07Fixed 7Fixed
Related Reports
Relates :  
JDK-6730762 - enable JRE auto-download on vista
Description
In JSE 1.6.0_02 "JRE Auto-Download" setting is grayed out for non admin Windows XP users within the Java console.
And by default the setting is "Never Auto-Download" for non-admin users, and "Always Auto-Download" for admin users.
You can also view this by the two attachments.

Customer is inquiring about this, because they have a Java Webstart application which asks their
users to download a specific version of JSE from their own network. And because the clients of this application
have non-admin XP privileges the application fails.

"JRE Auto-Download" feature is new to 1.6.0, so customer didn't have this issue with 1.5.0_11.

Customer question is this: How do I enable my non-admin clients now to auto download and auto install a JDK version
from within my Webstart application?
Comments
EVALUATION The problem here is quite simple. We disabled autodownload for non admins on windows, because to really install a jre requires admin privileges. However, they say they are pointing to their own "installer" which, I assume doesn't require admin privileges, and probably doesn't actually "install" the jre, but just puts it on the machine and uses javax.jnlp.ExtensionInstallerService.setJREInfo() to register it with Java Web Start. This is clearly a bug because we forgot to take this scenario into consideration when we disabled auto download.
27-09-2007