Java Error opening registry key

I get this error when I try to do anything with Java in command prompt:

Error opening registry key 'Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment.3'
Error: could not find Java.dll
Error: could not find Java 2 Runtime Environment

I did screw around with deleting Java directories and registry a few days ago. I restarted computer and java was still working fine, then i restarted it again today and now I get this error. I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling but that doesn't seem to work. I have the latest java JRE installed and the path set in the environment variables. Anyone have any clue how to fix this?

Make sure you remove any java.exe, javaw.exe and javaws.exe from your Windows\System32 folder and if you have an x64 system (Win 7 64 bits) also do the same under Windows\SysWOW64.

If you can't find them at these locations, try deleting them from C:\ProgramData\Oracle\Java\javapath.

You will find a folder named "Oracle" on ProgramData folder in your windows installed drive. Remove the folder. Hope it will work. In my case my install drive is C and my path is C:\ProgramData\Oracle

I had a similar problem. I had installed JDK7 update 1 but couldn't use it (probably because I found a JRE6 that I deleted after installing JDK7). Uninstalling JDK7 was impossible. The solution was to add the JRE registry entries by hand.

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment]
"CurrentVersion"="1.7"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.7]
"JavaHome"="C:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7"
"RuntimeLib"="C:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7\\bin\\client\\jvm.dll"

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.7.0_01]
"JavaHome"="C:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7"
"RuntimeLib"="C:\\Program Files\\Java\\jre7\\bin\\client\\jvm.dll"

You'll have to adjust the above to your own directories and version.

If this doesn't help, there's still JavaRa https://singularlabs.com/software/javara/ .

Delete these 3 files present in your local at path C:\ProgramData\Oracle\Java\javapath

java.exe
javaw.exe
javaws.exe

This solved the issue for me :)

Make sure you remove any java.exe, javaw.exe and javaws.exe from your system.

• if you have an x32 system (Win XP 32 bits) Windows\System32 folder

• if you have an x64 system (Win 7 64 bits) also do the same under Windows\SysWOW64 folder

On Windows 10 I had just installed the JDK, and got these errors when checking the version. I had to delete all executable files starting with java (i.e. java.exe, javaw.exe and javaws.exe) from C:\ProgramData\Oracle\Java\javapath. And then, once deleted, re-run the JDK installer, restart my terminal program and java -v works.

There are 3 locations to check

1. Registry HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment\1.8.0_xxx\JavaHome
2. Java Control Panel- Java tab - View - Path
3. Environment Variables - Path ($env:Path)

All 3 have to align (if you have multiple entires just remove the wrong ones) - thats all

I had the same:

Error opening registry key 'Software\JavaSoft\Java Runtime Environment

Clearing Windows\SysWOW64 doesn't help for Win7

In my case it installing JDK8 offline helped (from link)

I would have tagged this as a comment but cant (dont have the rep) just wanted to thank Tilman. I was trying to get PDFsam (PDF Split and Merge) to work to no avail.

At launch it would produce an error stating that it could not find JRE 1.6.0. I Have both 32 and 64 bit versions and they check out fine at the java website in their respective browsers.

Tried uninstalling/reinstalling and rebooting repeatedly as well as using JavaRa. No such luck, still no go.

I looked in the registry after reading this post and there was no ...\SOFTWARE\JavaSoft\ key so I added each with their respective string values pointing to my x86 version (PDFsam is a 32bit program). This got past the first problem but an error popped up about amd64 libraries suggesting the machine wanted to run the 64bit version. So I changed the paths to the 64bit JRE and PDFsam now works.

FYI - I got here by searching for Java registry keys after I was unable to launch javaw.exe from command prompt (even after adding the requisite paths to system path), making the aforementioned changes solved this as well.

I got this kind of error whe nI had JDK 1.7 before and I installed JAVA JDK 1.8 and pointed my JAVA_HOME and PATH variables to JAVA 1.8 version. When I try to find the java version I got this error. I restarted my machine, and it works . It seems to be we have to restart the machine after modifying the environment variables.

In case a virus scanner (like McAfee) is running, try:

1. Disable virus scanner
2. Uninstall Java (via Control Panel / Programs and Features)
3. Reinstall Java (from http://java.com">Java.com</a>;)
4. Re-enable virus scanner

Uninstall Java (via Control Panel / Programs and Features)

Install Java JRE 7 --> OFFLINE <-- Configure JAVA_HOME and Path = %JAVA_HOME%/bin;%PATH%

I have Windows 7. I got the same problem after installing: PyCharm. I wasn't satisfied with PyCharm, so I decided to use Eclipse instead. This is when I discovered that things went wrong with my JDK. I used to have Java.9.x. So I decided to uninstall it and get the newer version (at my time it was Java.11.x. The same problem persisted. I followed most of the steps mentioned above in the post like:

• Removing all java*.exe files,
• removing Java related entries from the registry.
• Cleaning-up all unnecessary Java folders. However nothing helped. I still had something in the system referring to a broken Java pathname.

What really brought remedy is the following:

• Uninstalled what ever version of JDK I had at the moment.
• Re-Installed the last JDK version I had before the problem took place
• Properly uninstall that version.
• Install whatever latest version of SDK. ..

That's it .. at this point everything returned to normal ... Except that Java.11.xx did not fix the system path automatically, I had to do it manually.

I followed multiple answers from above and got my issue resolved.

Issue:

Javac was on 13 from jdk but java was using 1.8 from jre so java threw incompatible runtime error

Fix:

1. Under Control Panel -> Programs: I uninstalled 1.8 (named Java 8 runtime) and DID NOT touch the other one (named Java (TM) SE Development Kit 13)

2. Deleted java.exe, javac.exe and javawc.exe files from: a. C:\Windows\system32 b. C:\Windows\SysWOW64 c. C:\ProgramData\Oracle\Java\javapath

3. The environment variable JDK_HOME was pointing to 13 but JAVA_HOME was pointing to 1.8 so i pointed JAVA_HOME to also use 13 which was C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-13.0.1

4. There was a Path variable under both User variables and system variables sections. For the one in user variables section, i added the string %JDK_HOME% - which translated automatically to the physical path. For the one under system variables, I deleted the path C:\ProgramData\Oracle\Java\javapath and added C:\Program Files\Java\jdk-13.0.1\bin

All good now! Thanks to all the people who answered, you rock!

Make sure to delete java references from system32, SysWOW64, and delete javapath from ProgramData\Oracle\Java. It solves the issue

If you have "C:\ProgramData\Oracle\Java\javapath" in your PATH, just make sure that the java bin path entries are present before this entry in your PATH.

I was facing the exact same issue, and I just moved the java jdk/jre bin path entries up in the list, above the oracle entry and it resolved my issue.