This is a request we often get from our customers as Oracle often updates Java. This blogpost takes the newest version of Java 8 as an example, and on this date (December 18th) it’s Java Version 8 Update 66.

Through the different updates the installation method has changed, but the general idea is the same, so it should be possible to use this for the next updates of Java version 8.

First off we want to obtain the newest version of Java, and in an offline installer version, we can get that from Oracle’s own site. Keep in mind that since most of the browsers used is still 32-bit, you want to obtain the 32-bit version of java, NOT the 64-bit version. This can lead to a lot of frustration if you miss that step.

Previous version, like Java 8 Update 45, had a method where you needed to extract the MSI file and then make a transform file of the MSI file and then copy an empty configuration file before it worked. I’ll make a blog post about this technique soon.

The method now is pretty straight forward. When you have downloaded the exe file (jre-8u66-windows-i586.exe)

We can run the installation by the following command:

jre-8u66-windows-i586.exe INSTALL_SILENT=1 AUTO_UPDATE=0 WEB_JAVA=1 WEB_JAVA_SECURITY_LEVEL=H EULA=0 REBOOT=0

Most of the flags should be pretty self-explanatory, but WEB_JAVA makes it possibly to run downloaded java applications through the browser. The full list of flags from Oracle’s own page.