Unable to find a java virtual machine in Oracle SQL Developer

Greetings!!

I do believe that some of you must have encountered the below error in your IT career:

You did a fresh installation of Oracle SQL Developer on your Windows machine, say, Windows 7 or Windows Server 2012 etc. Or it might be the case that its already installed on the machine and this is the first time that you have started it. It will pop-up the below dialogue box:

You might end up pointing it to the wrong java.exe path, something like:

• C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_121\bin\java.exe

Now what happens is that it will write this entry in the sqldeveloper.conf available at path like this:

• C:\app\elib\product\11.2.0\client_1\sqldeveloper\sqldeveloper\bin

It will look like this:

As you can, this is the same wrong path that you entered the first time. And because of this, every time you try to launch the Sql Developer, it will give the message like below:

Right?? :)

Be rest assured, there are two ways to resolve this:

Option 1. Delete this entry from the .conf file mentioned above. This will then cause the prompt to appear again. You can then give the correct path. It should be something like this (might be slightly different on your machine depending on your oracle version etc.): 

• C:\app\elib\product\11.2.0\client_1\jdk\bin\java.exe

The Sql Developer will then start as expected!

Option 2. Replace this wrong path with the correct path, something like :

• C:\app\elib\product\11.2.0\client_1\jdk\bin\java.exe

And then try to start the Sql Developer and it should start as expected!

Cheers!!