Update to Java 6.2 for Windows Vista Aero

Have you ever noticed when browsing using Internet Explorer 7 on Vista, sometimes you’ll come across a site that uses Java applets and before you know it your screen flickers and bang, you’ve been dropped back into Vista Basic mode? Sometimes with an accompanying info message:

It happens to me all the time, and it’s very fustrating. Lots of sites use Java applets and the first thing you’ll know when you come across one is that you lose the glass transulency, Alt-Tab previews, taskbar previews, and Flip3D. Once you’ve finished browsing the site with the java applet that caused this whole mess, Vista doesn’t automatically switch back to Aero. You have to kill IE7 completely - Vista then flickers back to Aero.

The problem was caused by an old version of the Java VM that comes packaged with Vista. The Java VM allows Vista to understand how to run Java applications, and it had some safety code in it which as a side-effect caused Vista to “trip” into the Vista Basic interface every time it was called. You can read more about this on Chet Haase’s blog.

Since Java is owned by Sun Microsystems, updates are not distributed through Windows Update. Java is third party software, so you need to take the upgrading action yourself. Fortunately this is easy enough to do. Head over to http://java.com/en/ and follow the instructions to download and install the Java Standard Edition 6 Update 2 for Windows Vista.

Reboot and the problem is solved

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