Sunday, January 24, 2010

[RANDOM] Cleaning old java updates from your system

Chances are that if you browse the internet regularly, you have the Java Runtime Edition (JRE) installed on your machine. Your browser launches it when you run into things like java applets, usually in the form of a game, or maybe a telnet client. My school's command line web login uses Java, for example.

Chances are also good that you've updated your JRE a few times since it bugs you with annoying prompts if you don't. The updates are good to have (they usually fix security flaws) but unfortunately Sun doesn't clean up after itself. Your computer probably looks something like this:


See those extra updates? I already have "Java 6 update 17", but there's a "Java update 4", a 5, and a 7. You only need the highest number update. Cleaning up the others can save you on average of a 100mb per update. If you have all 17 updates, that's 16 useless updates, or 1.6 gigabytes of wasted hard drive space.

How do I get rid of them?
You can try manually removing them using the Add/Remove programs tool, but that can sometimes break the installation or not clean them up fully. I just discovered a tool called JavaRa that seems to work pretty well. Try it out here (search for JavaRa, Windows will need the "binary" file).

For a corroborating source on what I just told you, try this link.

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