Andrey Butov

You’ve been writing BlackBerry applications and building your code with the BlackBerry JDE for some time now. Then, one day, you launch the JDE and it fails to open!

What gives?

I assume you’ve covered the basics – your system has the Java runtime environment set up, with all the Java-related environment variables set up properly and pointing to the right places.

Are you running on a 64-bit system?

BlackBerry tools don’t play nice with 64-bit systems. Tools don’t run properly, simulators don’t simulate accurately (sometimes not at all). If you are running the BlackBerry dev tools on a 64-bit version of Windows, and start seeing weird behavior, all other things aside, this could be the cause.

At Antair, we run all of our BlackBerry tools on 32-bit Windows XP (virtual) machines. Until RIM updates their tools to support 64-bit systems (ha!), I suggest you set up a 32-bit rig for your BlackBerry dev work.

I’m already running on a 32-bit system. The JDE just fails to open!

OK. Maybe it’s a memory or configuration issue.

Let’s take a look at the batch file that launches the IDE. If you’re working with JDE 4.5, you’ll find the launcher batch file in

“C:\Program Files\Research In Motion\BlackBerry JDE 4.5.0\bin”

Take a look at the ide.bat file. The batch file launches the JDE with something like:

start javaw -Xmx256M -DRIM_RUNTIME=..\lib -DRIM_BIN=..\bin -jar IDE.jar

Open up the command prompt, go to the directory containing the ide.bat file, and run the launch command manually to see if any errors are thrown out to the console:

javaw -Xmx256M -DRIM_RUNTIME=..\lib -DRIM_BIN=..\bin -jar IDE.jar

If you get a clear error message,  you can take steps to address whatever the process was complaining about. In certain instances, you may get an error indicating that there isn’t enough memory provided to the process to launch the IDE. It can happen. But hey, memory is cheap, so let’s give it some more:

javaw -Xmx1024M -DRIM_RUNTIME=..\lib -DRIM_BIN=..\bin -jar IDE.jar

See if that fixes things. We’ve had instances where allowing the process to grab more memory fixes the entire “JDE not starting” issue.

OK. 256, 1024, 2048, it doesn’t matter. I don’t see any error messages on the console, and the JDE still won’t start.

You installed a simulator recently didn’t you? Admit it. You’re testing an existing application to see if it will run on a new BlackBerry device, and you just downloaded and installed one of those brand new simulators that RIM provides. Right?

This breaks JDEs. I don’t know why, but installing standalone simulators with existing JDEs on the system, sometimes breaks some of those JDEs.

To fix it, go into the same bin directory that contained the ide.bat file we’ve been messing with. In there, you’ll find a “Settings.rc” file.

Delete it. Or move it, to be safe. Then start the JDE.

It’ll start as a “newly installed” JDE, with the samples project open, and no customizations that you spent all that time setting up … but it will start.