Download and Install Java 8 on Windows

Details: Written by Nam Ha Minh; Last Updated on 05 May 2020 | Print Email

In this article, I will guide you to download and install Java 8 (JDK 8) on Windows operating system. Though Java 8 is a quite old version (released in 2014), it is still in used by many organizations and preferred by many programmers. That’s why Oracle extends commercial support for JDK 8 until December 2030.

To download JDK 8, head to Java SE Development Kit 8 Downloads page and choose a download file suitable for your operating system. Oracle JDK 8 is distributed in archives (zip and targ.z) and installers (rpm for Linux, dmg for macOS and exe for Windows).

For Windows 10 x64-bit, choose to download the file jdk-8u251-windows-x64.exe file. You must login using an Oracle account (if you don’t have an Oracle account, then creating one is free).

I recommend you to verity the integrity of the downloaded by comparing SHA256 checksum of the file against the value published here. On Windows, type the following command:

certutil -hashfile jdk-8u251-windows-x64.exe sha256

If the generated SHA256 checksum value matches the one posted by Oracle, you’re safe to launch JDK 8 setup program. You will see this screen:

jdk 8 setup

Click Next twice to proceed the installation of Java 8. Then it also asks you to install JRE 8:

jre8 setup

Click Next to proceed and click Close when the setup done.

Note that Oracle JDK 8 setup automatically updates the PATH system environment variable so if you type java –version command in a Windows Command prompt, you would see this:

java 8 version

That means you have successfully installed JDK 8 on your computer. For development with Java 8, you should configure JAVA_HOME as described in this guide.

For visual steps, you can watch the following video:

About the Author:

Nam Ha Minh is certified Java programmer (SCJP and SCWCD). He began programming with Java back in the days of Java 1.4 and has been passionate about it ever since. You can connect with him on Facebook and watch his Java videos on YouTube.