Base and Java - AGAIN!

[JohnJeffrey]

This is one of those skull-bashing problems that just won’t go away. Yes, I know it’s been ‘answered’ after a fashion several times, but nowhere can I find anything to help solve the problem of a working system suddenly going bad quite out of the blue.
After months of working perfectly, my database refuses to run, giving the messages ’LibreOffice requires a Java runtime environment (JRE) to perform this task. Please install a JRE and restart LibreOffice’ and ‘The connection to the data source ‘xx.odb’ could not be established. No Java installation could be found. Please check your installation’.
This is not the first time it has happened to me, and it is clear from searching the web that it is an ongoing problem experienced by many other LO users. (On one previous occasion, the problem went away on its own with no action by me, which seems as much of a mystery as why it happens in the first place).
In the current case, it may or may not be a coincidence that I had recently upgraded to LO 5.3.7.2 (x64). Having read several posts about what to do, I am no nearer solving the problem. I have tried:

• Uninstall Java and reinstall it
• Uninstall LO and reinstall it
• Reset my PC to a restore point last week when everything was fine.
  I have rebooted the PC between each change.
  None of these steps seem to have made any difference. I would dearly love to understand what the problem is, but more importantly I need to be able to get at the data locked inside my file xx.odb, which appears to be permanently lost from view. So I have several questions:

Is there some way to retrieve the data without solving this JAVA problem?
What is the cause of the JAVA problem?
More to the point, how can it be solved? For example, should I be doing something special with 32 bit and 64 bit versions of Java? If so, what? (I am running Win 10 64 bit and can’t discover what version of Java I have – it just assures me it’s correct!).
Is there something critical about where Java is stored, or something in the settings.
Most helpfully, is there a step-by-step guide to getting out of this mess that works for any configuration?

[Ratslinger]

Hello,

Please use this post (click here) and insure you have correct Java installed and settings in LO for Java correct. If the settings do not reflect an installed Java, it is most likely the wrong version.

[peterwt]

As you have 64 bit LO you must have 64 bit Java. It will be in Program Files. 32 bit would be on Program Files(x86).

[JohnJeffrey]

Not sure how Peterwt knows I have 64 bit LO, but he clearly knows his stuff and I’ll take his word for it - I guess the clue is in the name 5.3.7.2 (x64)?
Ratslinger’s advice was helpful in setting me off on a new hunt which eventually succeeded, but only after a trawl through several posts picking out bits that seemed to apply, and several failed attempts to install Java in a way that LO would recognise.- not at all straightforward. Just reinforces my wish for a step-by-step guide.

[JohnJeffrey]

Thanks, Ratslinger. I appreciate your advice, but the route to success is a twisty one! Part of the problem is that there are so many variables, and another part is the relative unfriendliness of the Java website and installation process.

Nevertheless, with your help I have got things moving again. One key item was to ensure the LO settings pointed to a valid Java RTE exe file; this took a lot of doing, because Java kept insisting on hiding itself somewhere on my PC that LO couldn’t see. The other key was to ignore all download options offered by Java apart from ‘offline’, a title that gives no helpful clue to the fact that this is the only one that works - in my case, at least.

It occurs to me that, because this is a clearly a constantly recurring problem, users would benefit from a dedicated article on the basic principles of getting LO and Java to work together. I accept that most of the information is available in various posts, but flitting from one to another to another and trying to decide which bits apply to your own case rapidly causes brain-boil. I certainly don’t have the expertise to produce such an article, but somebody out there does, and whoever did it would earn buckets full of kudos!

In the meantime, my thanks to Ratslinger for giving me a critically important leg up at a time when I was starting to consider abandoning LO altogether.

[mikekaganski]

Well: that’s a moving goal to try to write something on this matter: Java site is changing; Java updates are changing, too (there was a time when Java updater updated both 32- and 64-bit versions of installed Java, and put them in wrong places - see here for possibly obsolete faq mentioning that).

So “most of the information is available in various posts”, and "you have to decide “which bits apply to your own case” is the result.