smartPLS Installation Error - "An error has occurred. See the log file "

I am having a module on Statistics and I am supposed to use smartPLS 2. 1 year ago I was able to install and work smartPLS quite easily without any issue in installation. But this time I had an installation issue with smartPLS. And during the class I got to know lot of my friends could not install either. So I thought to share the issue and solution to overcome it.

After installing for the first time, when I tried to open I get the error message:

An error has occurred. See the log file 
C:\Program Files(x86) \SmartPLS2\Configuration\1329991694250.log 

When checked in the log file it says:

eclipse.buildId=unknown 
java.version=1.7.0_02 
java.vendor=Oracle Corporation ...........

So how to solve it?

This is due to having JRE 7 in your machine. When you try to install smartPLS 2 with JRE 7, you get an incompatibility issue. With JRE 6, there is no such issue.

Step 1: If you do not have JRE 6 installed, install it. Do not uninstall JRE 7.
Step 2: Copy the path to JRE 6 installation (e.g., c:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\javaw.exe)
Step 3: Open Notepad and copy the below 2 lines to Notepad.


-vm
c:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre6\bin\javaw.exe

(Note: Last line is the path to JRE 6 installation, it will vary based on your installation. Replace your path of JRE 6 )

Step 4: Save the file as

smartpls.ini
in your SmartPLS 2 program folder (e.g., c:\Program Files (x86)\SmartPLS)

(Note: extension of the file is .ini)



Thus, JRE6 will be automatically used by smartPLS.

There are some other methods in : http://www.smartpls.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1882