Neo4j service fails to start after a Java update

[thomasdprice01]

Hi all,

I have a locally installed Neo4j Server (Community 4.4.11) which I previously installed as a Windows Service. It used to work fine but then I recently tried to start the service and was  greeted with the following:

Looking at the jdk path quoted, it looks like I now have jdk-11.0.16.101-hotspot and the 11.0.12.7 path is (almost) empty. I'm assuming Java updated automatically in the background and got rid of the old version. So, a couple of questions:

• How do I get my Neo4j service up and running again?
• How do I avoid this problem in the future?

I've tried uninstalling the Neo4j service, but the 'bin\Neo4j uninstall-service'  command gives exactly the same error, since it too, seems to need Java. I've tried downloading and installing jdk 11.0.12 but it wants to put it in a totally different install directory, so that doesn't seem right, and it doesn't mention the 'hotspot' postfix.

Looking forward to hearing your suggestions.

[glilienfield]

Can you test if java is installed correctly by executing 'java -version' in a cmd window? It should tell you the version installed if it is working.  What is your JAVA_HOME environment variable? 

[thomasdprice01]

Thanks for taking the time to reply 🙂

Here's the cmd output to your queries:

[steggy · Accepted solution]

Your JAVA_HOME is incorrect - the error message shows that there is no java there. First thing to try is to correct that.

[thomasdprice01]

Thanks for the message, what's likely to have been the root cause of the variable not updating properly?

[steggy]

Don't know - it's been a *long* time since I've used Java on WIndows, but in my faint memory, I believe that setting JAVA_HOME is something you do manually after installing Java

[thomasdprice01]

Ok, I'll look into that, thanks. So I seem to have got it all working again - I updated the JAVA_HOME variable to point at the newer jdk path, and then had to run: 'neo4j update-service' to get the service to run properly again. Thanks for your help both of you!