Do not rely on the windows path variable because it gets changed in nearly every update. E.g. a chrome (32bit on a 64 bit machine) java update replaces the systemwide 64 bit JVM by a 32 bit JVM. Note also that this entry has to be the last one in the eclipse.ini, otherwise it does not work,And - as otherwise stated - the JAVA_HOME variable is NOT evaluated by eclipse.exe.