Firefox and Java JRE update problem

I've had a problem with Firefox over the last day or two with it not being able to run Java applets, where previously it could.

After much trial and error, searching, testing, removing and reinstalling I tracked the problem down to the JRE plugin for firefox not being updated when the Java JRE is updated to the latest version. The final solution that fixed my problem was very simple - delete the old version JRE plugin dll file from the firefox plugins directory.

While this may not happen to everybody, and the solution may not be suitable for everybody, I thought I would share the experience here in case anybody else comes across the same problem. It could save them hours of searching and hair pulling.

A more detailed description of the symptoms and solution can be found here

Thanks for posting this!

If it saves somebody the 7+ hours of searching, headscratching, uninstalling and reinstalling I went through then it's worth it.

very nice - Java is working fine for me though. I've tested it on this applet:
http://www.cs.biu.ac.il/~bravery/Reversi/Reversi.html
any idea what caused the problem? specific patch you installed?

I didn't have to instal anything extra. It seemed that when the JRE was updated it didn't update the dll in the Firefox plugins. So Firefox was using the old dll to try and connect to the old version of the JRE. When I deleted the old dll from the plugins folder everything worked fine, so I guess Firefox went and found the correct dll.