Demantra setup.exe does nothing on Windows 7

Last evening, Mukhtiar called me to assist in Demantra installation on Windows. By the time we got on screen share, he had already downloaded patch 2195481 and installed JDK 1.8.0_77. However, when he clicked setup.exe, nothing happened.  We tried these :

1. Right click on setup.exe > Click Properties > Compatibility Tab > Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows XP
2. Run the program as Administrator
3. Tried changing registy settings as per some microsoft technotes

However nothing worked.

We located a file called setup.lax that was a configuration file for the installer and switched on stderr=console

However it showed a command window that used to disappear in a flash.

We tried uninstalling JDK 1.8.0_77 and installing JDK 1.7

Setting environment variable JAVA_HOME as described Demantra installation guide on https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26401_01/doc.122/e22516/T573380T574948.htm

JAVA_HOME System Environment Variable

If the client machine does not have JDK version 1.6 or 1.7 installed, the Installer prompts you to download and install it. After installation, set JAVA_HOME to the JDK installation directory (for example, C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.6.0_16).

Nothing worked.

Mukhtiar located a blog that advised setting java heap size to 512m by setting this environment variable:

_JAVA_OPTIONS = -Xmx512M

The Java Virtual Machine takes two command line arguments which set the initial and maximum heap sizes: -Xms and -Xmx. You can add a system environment variable named _JAVA_OPTIONS, and set the heap size values there

As soon as this environment variable was set, setup.exe finally launched.  All this time it was erroring out as the default 256MB was insufficient for starting the installer.

There was information about Out of Memory error on the installation guide too, but we had missed that:

Out of Memory Error Message

Verify memory settings:

1. From the Windows Start menu, choose Settings, Control Panel, and then Java. The Java Control Panel dialog box appears.
2. Click the Java Tab.
3. From the Java Applet Runtime Settings section, click View.
4. Verify that the value of the field Java Runtime Parameters is at least -Xmx256M and is based on the client machine hardware/RAM capacity. Oracle recommends value -Xmx512M for heavy-duty client side use.