Problem

After upgrading to a version of Confluence which is bundled with a higher version of JAVA, the service no longer starts.  You may notice that after starting the service manually in Services (Right Click > Start Service) that the Confluence Service shows "Starting" and then "Stopped" after a few seconds.  The Confluence application will not start.

The following errors (or similar) appear in catalina.out:

04-Aug-2015 11:22:55.131 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.startInternal Starting service Tomcat-Standalone
04-Aug-2015 11:22:55.147 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngine.startInternal Starting Servlet Engine: Apache Tomcat/8.0.23
04-Aug-2015 11:23:03.010 SEVERE [Standalone-startStop-1] org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.startInternal A child container failed during start

with Tomcat stopping just a few seconds later...

04-Aug-2015 11:23:03.010 INFO [main] org.apache.catalina.core.StandardService.stopInternal Stopping service Tomcat-Standalone

Diagnosis

Diagnostic Steps

• Check that the JAVA version bundled with the application matches with the one being used by the service.  You can do this in the following way:
  • First, start Confluence manually with the startup.bat file in the Confluence Install/bin directory.
  • Go to System Information and check for the JAVA being used by the application.
  • Open the cmd prompt and go to Confluence Installation/bin directory
  • Type tomcat8w //ES/TYPESERVICENAMEHERE.
  • Browse to the JAVA tab and find the path and version in the field for Java Virtual Machine.
  • If the JAVA versions are not a match, you are hitting this issue.

Cause

The JAVA version does not change the JAVA path in the service after an upgrade.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you will need to find the correct JAVA home location and change the directory in the service properties.

To change the the path in the service properties, please do the following:

• Open the cmd prompt and go to Confluence Installation/bin directory
• Type the cmd tomcat8w //ES/TYPESERVICENAMEHERE to open the service properties
• Click on the Java tab and change the Java Virtual Machine Path
• Start the Service

Alternative Method:

• Go to Start -> Run and run 'regedt32.exe' and then:

• • For Windows 32 bit edition navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SOFTWARE -> Apache Software Foundation -> Procrun 2.0 -> Confluence -> Parameters
  • For Windows 64 bit edition navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> SOFTWARE -> Wow6432Node -> Apache Software Foundation -> Procrun 2.0 -> Confluence -> Parameters
• Next right click on Jvm, click Modify and change the path.