ColdFusion Muse

Explained: Error Loading jvm.dll

Recently on CF-Talk I participated with super-gurus Dave Watts, Russ Michaels, Wil Genovese, Jochem Van Dieten and others trying to help Brook Davies overcome a ticklish obstacle. After updating here ColdFusion 8 server with the updater he was unable to start Coldfusion. Instead the /runtime/bin/cfusion-out.log presented him with this unhelpful error message.

"Error loading: C:/ColdFusion8/runtime/jre\bin\server\jvm.dll".

Brook tried different paths and different JVMs - all to no avail. Finally he fell to frantically uninstalling and reinstalling, updating and rolling back and (presumably) consuming large quantities alcohol. The list was helpful with a variety of suggestions. Suggestions ranged from a bit depth mismatch (a 32 bit OS trying to run a 64bit JVM for example), to paths, bad downloads, file I/O, wrong updaters - the whole gamut. But nothing seemed to work.

The Fix

Finally, user "Mack" (a newcomer to me) figured it out. The install in question was using a custom or incorrect version of the msvcr71.dll file. This is a core library on a windows machine. The jvm.dll cannot be instantiated without it - and in this case the version of that file was important as well. Mack copied the newest version into the /runtime/bin directory and the JVM was able to load. There are a couple things to note here. First, I don't now what the exact version should be. My information has Mack copying the dll from a running install into the bin directory and that did the trick. Secondly, you don't need to register the dll or overwrite it in the system32 directory. Apparently Jrun looks first in the /bin directory and then elsewhere - so as long as it's in the bin directory it's cool.

Finally, user Leigh (a princess I presume) noticed these 2 bugs in the Sun bug tracker for 1.6 which could be related.

• 6509291
• 6509739

Now perhaps an enterprising Muse reader will publish the exact version in the comments for us.