Setup OpenFire Spark client on Windows 8.1 64 bit

This post documented some problems that i encountered when trying to setup OpenFire's Spark client on Windows 8.1 64 bit OS, as well as some work-around solution.

Install Spark Client

First of all, you probably won't be able to install the Spark client, the install4j used by Spark client for installation seems to not work with Windows 8 settings. If you double-click to launch it, you will probabily see the installer terminates after first appearing.

To solve this, right click the installer and select "Properties", in the "Properties" page, set the compatability option to Windows 7 or lower, and click "OK", Now double-click the installer and try to install again.

Run Spark Client

Again even if you have jre 1.7 or 1.8 installed and system variable path properly setup (including the JAVA_HOME and Path), you may not be able to launch it, the app will complain the "EXE4J_JAVA_HOME" is not properly setup. Even if you at the "EXE4J_JAVA_HOME" to the environment system variables (by mirroring the JAVA_HOME), the same error dialog simply refuses to go away.

To solve this, go to the installation folder ("e.g. C:\\Program Files (x86)\Spark") and double-click the startup.jar file in the "lib" folder