How to fix Netbeans jdkhome error

Netbeans is one of the most versatile IDEs one can find in the web today. As it supports several open source languages and consists of various other convenient features that are required by a web developer, this IDE has a fast growing community with easy tutorials to help any newbie developer understand its nuances quickly.

Built using Java, Netbeans requires the Java Development Kit (JDK) and Java Runtime Environment (JRE) for installation and execution purposes.

If you have freshly installed Java on your computer while Netbeans was already installed, there may be instances when an error message such as the one shown below appears upon initialization of Netbeans:

This is due to a configuration error in setting up of the JDK path. Although you could click on ‘yes’ and continue to work over the default version, there is a simple fix to this bug:

- Starting off, locate the Netbeans configuration file on your installation. Ideally, it should be under:

{Path_to_netbeans_installation}\etc\netbeans.conf (Ex - C:\Program Files\NetBeans_{Version}\etc\netbeans.conf)

Ex - netbeans_jdkhome="C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_15"

- Next, edit the variable netbeans_jdkhome. This should be present between the 18th and 22nd line in the configuration file.

Note: make sure that you are editing this file with your system administrator’s permission. Else, you might encounter permission error while updating – especially over Windows.