intellij - java: Cannot find JDK '1.7' for

Question

I've just installed IntelliJ on Windows 8 (and 7). I then use the 'Java Hello World' Sample as my project.

I then selected the JDK that was installed (C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_10). Project creates successfully and I can see all the classes associated with the project etc. When I "make the project" I get the following error:

Compilation completed with 1 error and 0 warnings in 2 sec
1 error 
0 warnings
java: Cannot find JDK '1.7' for module 'TEST'

No matter what I do I cannot compile any Java code under Windows8/IntelliJ

I have tried the following:

• Invalidating cache.
• Switching to 32bit JDK instead of 64bit
• Idea64.exe instead of idea.exe
• Installing 1.6 incase it was a 1.7 issue??
• Changed the JAVA_HOME to point to different versions (ie currently C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_10)

I'm lost as to why this is happening.

Answer 1

project structure > project > choose correct jdk

or ctrl+alt+shift+s > project> choose correct jdk

also platform settings > SDK's >and make sure 1.7 is there.

Answer 2

In my case, Idea said "Failed to save settings" (probably due to a lot of projects being open. After that, it could not run tests with "Cannot find JDK '1.8' for module XXX" message. Idea restart solved the issue for me.

Answer 3

It seems that sometimes Intellij (or the user:-)) is getting confused when importing settings, especially if you change the paths where the jdk resides (for me it happened during a migration to a new Linux environment).

The only way I could correct this was to delete the user's settings folder.

In Linux :

I removed the folder (and subfolders): ~/.IntelliJIdea12/

Of course this would remove the saved settings, licenses e.t.c.

Answer 4

I believe this is an IntelliJ bug.

This isn't a fix, but you can work around this by going to Settings > Compiler, and disabling 'Use External Build'.

Answer 5

In case you want to still share the documents & desktop, the solution is to modify the idea.properties file (for instance, under C:\Program Files (x86)\JetBrains\IntelliJ IDEA 12.1\bin\idea.properties ), and change the following properties to point to different a location that is specific to the OS in which you are working:

idea.config.path=
idea.system.path=
idea.plugins.path=
idea.log.path=

I also copied the previous folder (on my computer it was under

\\psf\Home\.IntelliJIdea12

) to the new location to preserve all settings.

Update: I had the same problem after I installed IntelliJ Idea 13. I moved the .IntelliJIdea13 folder to c:\Users\costa from \\psf\Home, then I modified the C:\Program Files (x86)\JetBrains\IntelliJ IDEA 13.0\bin\idea.properties file:

idea.config.path=C:/Users/costa/.IntelliJIdea13/config
idea.system.path=C:/Users/costa/.IntelliJIdea13/system
idea.plugins.path=C:/Users/costa/.IntelliJIdea13/config/plugins
idea.log.path=C:/Users/costa/.IntelliJIdea13/system/log

Answer 6

I made the error while editing idea.properties to leave a whitespace at the end of my personally added idea.config.path=../.IdeaIC/config line.

This resulted exactly in the Cannot find JDK '...' for module error message.

I needed to "trim" the line manually, just deleted the whitespace, restarted IntelliJ and everything worked fine again.

I found this while scanning the idea.log file where I found java.io.FileNotFoundException: C:\Software\IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition 14.1.3\.IdeaIC\config \tasks\root.contexts.zip