Garbled menu text when using CodeWatch

Problem:

When using CodeWatch, it displays a garbled menu text or disappearing text, as you hover over menu, drop-downs, etc., on a Windows 7 machine running both JVM 7 and JVM 8 under VMWare.  It did not have an issue on Windows 7 running natively.

Resolution:

Defining the following variable and restarting the system fixes the issue:  J2D_D3D=FALSE

Diagnostic information:

Our research showed that it was caused by a problem with the video driver.  Some searching on Google (search for “java swing garbled text”) found a number of articles about either a corrupted font on Windows or a display driver issue with NVIDIA hardware. 

1. First, check that there is only one version of java installed.  A lot of 3^rd party software, like DB2, and even our own software ship with a JVM.  Depending on how they’re installed, you can get in a situation where a java program can pick-up one version when executed one way while another picks up a different version.  The best thing to do is de-install any older versions and check PATH, JAVA_HOME, and CLASSPATH to ensure the correct version appears there.
2. Once you’re sure the java environment is correct, it’s worthwhile to make sure you’re using the latest video driver.  For a VM, ensure that you have the latest version of the VMWare tools installed on the VM.
3. To help verify everything is cleaned-up properly and consistent across the machine, it’s worthwhile to run a simple “hello world” in debug mode in both Enterprise Server and from the command line, to confirm the issue is still happening in both environments.  Look at the java version displayed in the CodeWatch GUI Help->About menu to make sure they’re consistent.
   
   It’s also worthwhile to export all the environment variables to a text file from a command prompt (“set > env_vars.txt”) and search for “java” and “jvm” to make sure they all have the same path.
4. If the text is still garbled, you can have Windows rebuild the font cache to fix any corrupted fonts. To do this on Windows 7, execute the following from a command prompt and reboot the machine:
   
   del %WINDIR%\\System32\\FNTCACHE.DAT
5. A final test to run is to Remote Desktop into the machine.  In our testing, the display was correct in this test thereby confirming the display driver issue.