We have bunch of jar files that are Java applications and run just fine. There are a few however that do nothing although it is expected to run :) with a GUI.
Is this a common issue with jar files that some have difficulties to run?
The OS is Windows 7 and the example not working jar is whitebox a free GIS application, BTW.
We reiterate that we have many jar applications that run like a charm in the above system. This means that it should not be a problem with Java installation (latest update 7u40 exists in the system).
We checked almost all jar failure related topics but no one discussing the issue above which is happening for some applications.
We also mention, we uninstalled and reinstalled java many times but with no success. The application whitebox does nothing. In one try, it did run and when we closed it. And we are since then trying to run it again but nothing is happening! Even nothing appears in the running Processes!
We examined command line and double click. No success. The file type association is correct. Furthermore as we said others are working just fine.
The problem reported was due to inadequate RAM. Whitebox requires 2GB RAM to run smoothly. While this is huge we could run it on an old laptop with only 1GB RAM. The solution was to increase the size of paging file (virtual memory) into the range 1024MB and 2048MB. We also moved its location from C drive into other drives. We the settings mentioned it runs without any problem. We have tried it many times and happy to report for this case the problem is now completely solved.
Conclusion:
For some Java applications if something happend as described in the question it may be due to memory requirement. In this case increasing virtual memory could solve the problem without a need to buy additional RAM.