Member Avatar for HighStik

I'm trying to install some .jar & .rar applications on my laptop (XP Pro, SP2) and/or Dell Axim hand held and applications fail to launch. Any suggestions for a technical illiterate?

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— building on the direction from and , here are concise, practical steps and checks to get those files running on Windows XP and to understand what will (or won't) run on a Dell Axim.

First, quick test on the XP laptop (safe, reversible): put the .jar in a simple folder (for example C:\test), open Start → Run → cmd, change to that folder and try running it from the command line:

cd C:\test
java -jar yourfile.jar

If you see an error mentioning "no main" or "Main-Class", the JAR doesn’t contain an executable entry in its manifest — it’s a library or a mobile MIDlet rather than a standalone desktop program. To inspect that manifest without installing tools, open the .jar with 7‑Zip or WinRAR and view META-INF/MANIFEST.MF; look for Main-Class: (desktop) or MIDlet-Name: (mobile).

To restore double-click behavior on XP (if Java is installed but .jar won’t open), run these commands from an Administrator command prompt, adjusting the Java path to match your installation:

assoc .jar=jarfile
ftype jarfile="C:\Program Files\Java\jre6\bin\javaw.exe" -jar "%1" %*

For .rar archives: use 7‑Zip or WinRAR to extract. If extraction fails, check for multi-part archives (.r00/.r01 or .part1.rar) and ensure all parts are in the same folder. A corrupt or partial download is a common cause — re-download if sizes look wrong.

About the Dell Axim: many JARs targeted at phones are Java ME (MIDlets) and will not run on Windows Mobile natively. Those require a Pocket PC JVM (examples used historically include third‑party Java ME runtimes). The manifest check above will tell you which platform the JAR expects. Also treat unknown downloads cautiously — scan them before running.

Common failure reasons: missing executable entry in the JAR manifest, wrong target platform (Java ME vs desktop), association/path problems on XP, or a corrupted multi-part archive.

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Member Avatar for bobbyraw

jar are some form of java archive, like a cab file in windows, it stores files here and decompress then when the java application rur,,,,,,,,,rar are winrar files same thing as a zip file so you need winrar or the latest version of winzip to open/inflate these files. for the jar you need a java base program, java version six shoulddo the trick,,,,,,,,,,,However they might not be of much use to you if inflated

Member Avatar for piyushchandra

u need to have JDK/JRE installed to RUN .jar file
but, .jar can be OPENED by winrar or 7zip , etc programs, but u can see only class files, not of any use. u can get it from sun/java website.
it may fail, coz some jar files might have been written for mobile phones.. ; )

to ope .rar, as bobbyraw said, use latest winzip(trial/unregistered), or u can use 7zip(free software).

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