Hi Aklilu,
First of all - thank you so much for your patience and help.
Pointing me to the
"geoss_in_practice_tutorial"
was a huge help - in particular telling me to start on page 88 for the
geonetwork installation. When I first looked at the manual,
I thought it was just for folks who wanted to install geoserver.
So I uninstalled everything (geonetwork and java) and started from
scratch, following the instructions.
Previously I had uninstalled everything, and started with installing JRE.
But this time I installed the JDK (disabled the
public JRE as the instructions indicated).
I defined the PATH variable and added the appropriate path to the jdk bin
folder.
I set the JAVA_HOME but didn't know what to do wtih GEoSERVER_HOME and
didn't think it was necessary because I'm not installing geoserver.
And just for good measure I made sure the folder options recognized that a
JAR file should be opened with java.
Then I rebooted.
Now I can get geonetwork to start, but it doesn't have the map along the
left border.
Oddly enough I decided to download geonetwork and try to install it on my
laptop - just as is without changing java or anything.
Installed like a dream including the map on the start up page. I know that
the various software installed on my desktop and laptop are different, so
there's some software installation on my desktop that was causing my
problems and is continuing to plague me.
I can work from my laptop, but would prefer my desktop - and would like to
get the map viewer showing.
So, if you have any other hints, I'd appreciate it.
thanks!
VeeAnn