MPECS Inc. Blog: IMS KVM Java Pain

Okay, so Java is a bit of a pain when working with the Intel Modular Server’s console.

When the Windows 7 VM was not joined to a domain, we could not get the KVM function to work in IE8 even after adding the MSC site to the Trusted Sites list and lowering the security setting as low as it could go.

Once the Windows 7 VM was joined to the SBS 2008 domain running on top of Hyper-V on the 1U SR1630HGP management server, we could gain access to the Java based KVM feature without messing with any IE8 settings.

But, it sure can be a frustrating odyssey to get things going on a freshly built Windows 7 VM!

We installed Java from a relatively recent download. It turned out to be 1.5.0_18.

When we went to start a new KVM session in the MSC, we were greeted with:

Message from webpage

Sorry, this browser is using Java(tm) version 1.5.0_18. Remote KVM requires version 1.6.0 or higher. Please download the latest version from http://www.java.com

Okay, so we do so.

We install the newer version then go to open a new KVM session in the MSC and we are greeted with:

Um, but . . . we installed the correct version?!?

Head into Programs and Features and here is what we see:

Apparently, it would have been a good idea to uninstall the earlier version of Java first!

So, thinking that we can quickly get into what we needed to do, we uninstalled the earlier version without reinstalling the newer version first. We then tried to initiate a KVM session and:

Long story short, uninstall the old version _before_ installing the new one. And, make sure all browser sessions are closed before installing the updated version too.

We ended up needing to uninstall _all_ versions of Java, rebooting, and deleting all IE browsing history with no joy. We kept getting the above Java requirement error. In this case we were using the offline installer file.

So, we tried going to the Java site and running the bootstrap installer instead. That seemed to work as far as getting Java recognized as installed in the browser via the Java test available on the site.

One thing to make note of when a fresh Windows 7 management system is set up is to make sure that the IMS’s Modular Server Control (MSC) is added to the Trusted Sites list before the KVM functionality will work.

And from there: