Vista: How to avoid problems when installing plugins

If you are running NetBeans 6.0 in Windows Vista, you may have problems with plugin installation via the NetBeans Plugin Manager (122186). For instance you get the exception Warning - could not install some modules. The solution is to turn off 'User Account Control'.

In general, on Vista, 'User Account Control' should be turned off during the initial install of NetBeans and any time you wish to run the Plugin Manager.

If you had tried updating the IDE while 'UAC' was turned on, the incomplete update may have corrupted the NetBeans installation. In this case:

1. To turn off UAC, go to Control Panel > User Accounts > Turn User Account Control On/Off.
2. Uninstall NetBeans. Before running the installer again, you must
   1. delete the .netbeans directories under your \Users\username folder
   2. delete the netbeans directory under Program Files,
   3. if you installed TomCat and/or Glassfish, uninstall them using Control Panel > Programs and Features.
   4. if it exists, delete ~/.netbeans-derby directory under your \Users\username folder
3. Perform the plugin-download and installation again via the Plugin Manager.

Note: Performing a complete uninstall before the reinstall may not be necessary if all the modules of interest do not update themselves globally (i.e in the installation directory). But the above set of steps is the only sure-fire way to solve this problem.

Applies to: NetBeans IDE 6

Platform: Microsoft Windows Vista

See also:

• Vista: Why did the installer report success but did not install NetBeans?
• Bug 127174: UML Plugin Wont Activate
• Exception installing UML plugin nbusers: / nabble