Question

We have an intranet page which has been around for several years and it uses an applet from an old site http://www.AcuteApplets.com (which no longer exists). The applet is called AcuteShifter. Those details I don’t think matter so much. Anyway, IE browser loads the plug-in fine on the client site pre-Java 7 install. When Java 7 is installed on the client machine, the following dialog prompts the user:

The user can click cancel, or enter their credentials, and then the applet works regardless of how they close the window. When we uninstall Java 7, the authentication dialog goes away, as it runs without issue when having Java 6x on a client computer. How does one get rid of this dialog? I unzipped the jar file and it appears that the code within the jar is pre-compiled, so I’m not sure if it can be edited without the original source code.

Note that this occurs each time IE is launched if it’s not already opened. If the user selects the “Save this password in your password list” box, the dialog still pops up on subsequent open/close of IE on this page.

Answer 1

I found an answer for this on Oracle discussion boards. While not a fix, a simple workaround is to enable anonymous access on the directory in which the applet exists.

Thread: Authentication required popup problem

The first post on the forum lists workarounds:

1. Enabling anonymous authentication on the virtual folder always solves the problem.
2. Sometimes, changing security zone from ‘Trusted’ to ‘Local intranet’ solves the scenario (‘Authentication required’ popup)
   problem. It’s worth to note that changing the security zone never
   helps if the page URL contains dots (for example, uses IP address
   instead the server name).
3. Upgrading to IE9 solves the scenario 2 problem partly: Java asks for the credentials only once. But our customers will not be able to
   go with IE9, as its not tested by them yet, and this process will take
   at least a year (most of them banks and gambling companies with strict
   and secure environment)