Eclipse Initializing Java Tooling Error on 64bit Windows 7

Just a short note about an error I resolved lately.

Eclipse Initializing Java Tooling hangs at 1% while eclipse uses a lot of resources while configuring org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.internal.web.container … I’m on Windows 7, 64bit, 64bit JDK, running as non-admin.

This error seems to have some connection to the installed plugins, or with the last exit of eclipse. I found a forum entry “on the internets” where one user said he just deleted the lock file in his workspace’s metadata folder. This didn’t work for me. Another user mentioned that you can delete or rename the folder to resolve the issue:

WORKSPACE_HOME/.metadata/.plugins/org.eclipse.core.resources/.projects

This worked for me, eclipse starts back on error-free again – BUT when closing eclipse, another error appears, that says that metadata in this folder could not be saved (something to do with the servers). Starting back up again after this gives me the same error again, Java Tooling hanging at 1%

Switching the workspace seems to help. Saying that, the workspace is corrupt somehow.So the single working workaround is deleting the .metadata folder for your eclipse workspace and start that workspace anew, importing projects, generating a new server. Can’t reproduce the error now, but I still guess that its something one of the plugins save wrongly in the project-metadata. I suspect its the JavaScript support, the springide-plugin or the subclipse plugin, as these are the plugins that a guy from this forum-thread had installed that I also use.

Well, never mind. Its a bunch of plugins in one giant IDE-framework. Can’t work on a 64bit Win7, right?

, Posted Thursday, November 19th, 2009 under Projekte.

14 comments

  1. This happened to me as well, on a 64-bit Mac (Snow Leopard). I was able to get around it by cleaning all my compilation outputs using Ant (i.e. deleting all the “/build/classes” directories).

  2. ultimate_question says:

    This also happened to me on a 64-bit Mac after upgrading to Snow Leopard although I doubt it is related to the OS or architecture. It’s just another Eclipse bug. Something somewhere in the workspace metadata got corrupted — an event that happens relatively often. I’ve found it’s quicker to create a new workspace and import the projects than to try to track down the cause.

  3. abhimanyu panwar says:

    I am working on developing a portlet.

    but when i try to do something , eclipse comes with an error ” waiting for user operation” and it shows ” Initializing java tooling(1%)”

    Please tell me the right way to fix this thing …….

  4. Reread above: create a new workspace, rename your old one, restart eclipse, tell it the name of the new workspace.

    Then you should have a fresh workspace thats working again. Here, import your project you’re working on.

    Updating eclipse from time to time should also help :-)

  5. antoine sabot-durand says:

    I have the same problem with Helios 3.6.1 on Macos Cocoa 32bits. Uninstalling m2eclipse and m2eclipse WTP extension corrected the problem. Shouldn’t someone report this bug to Eclipse ?

  6. antoine sabot-durand says:

    In fact uninstalling m2eclipse WTP extension is enough to fix this issue. So the question is : does it come from Eclipse or m2eclipse ?

  7. I don’t use Helios as it had problems with the included tomcat and I needed that for work. Therefore I went back to Galileo. m2eclipse might be causing the problem – I’m using it today but I’m not sure if I had it plugged in when I wrote this post.

  8. Thanks for this post.
    As Antonie commented, the problem is related to the (optional) M2Eclipse WTP plugin, uninstalling it is enough to fix the problem

  9. Deleting the lock file resolved for me. I had this problem using Helios + WinXP + Oracle VM VirtualBox.

  10. Yep that may be the most simple solution :-)

    Just kill Eclipse, got to the workspace it will try to load and delete the .lock file in there.

  11. Deleting the .lock file worked a charm. Thanks for the tip!

  12. yamit says:

    Delete or rename file WORKSPACE_HOME\.metadata\.lock that works fine for me

  13. Starting eclipse with a ‘-clean’ option fixes it for me.

  14. I delete the .lock file and works for me.

    Thanx!!

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