Why does Mountain Lion want a Java runtime?

You might want to check out your Login Items as Thomas suggests above.

Matt

Thank you Matthew!

I'll check it out after a short while but these items are essential for me...

I'm seeing the same thing.

The only Login Item I have is iTunesHelper. I removed that and I'm still being bugged by the popup.

I DON'T WANT TO INSTALL JAVA -- I know that this would fix the problem, but I'm actually posting because I would like to know how to find out what Java component is triggering the message. I'm curious. If some core OS X component requires Java, then why isn't it installed with the rest of the OS?

Java Preferences won't launch, by the way.

Activity Monitor doesn't show anything tha't obviously a Java app trying to launch.

Tried removing iTunesHelper from Login Items and logging back in with "Reopen Applications" unchecked.

The popup is still there, so that isn't it.

Found it --- in the Console you can see which applications are trying to launch:

7/28/12 10:04:05.838 AM Download Java Components[11402]: Java Install cancelled

7/28/12 10:04:09.080 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[184]: (com.crashplan.engine[11490]) Exited with code: 1

7/28/12 10:04:09.080 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[184]: (com.crashplan.engine) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

7/28/12 10:04:09.246 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[184]: (com.mlbam.nexdef[11493]) Exited with code: 97

7/28/12 10:04:09.246 AM com.apple.launchd.peruser.501[184]: (com.mlbam.nexdef) Throttling respawn: Will start in 10 seconds

So the likely candidates are CrashPlan -- yep, I do remember that's a Java app -- and MLB.com's NexDef plugin, which ***** anyway and can be removed. :-)

I went my local Apple Store yesterday and the Genius said that the only way to prevent this pop-up is to just install Java runtime.

But I don't want to do it!

After some extra examinations, it turned out that the pen-tablet driver by Wacom probably needs Java-runtime and it has no longer appered after I uninstalled this driver.

But it is just applied in my case.

I don't know it helps all of you guys.

I've been looking in the Console now, trying to find what's trigging this, but I've had no luck.

I have no peripherals or known installed drivers. This is a MBP (2007) that I use for sofa surfing and testing only, so it's a pretty clean install.

If anyone can come up with something, I'd appreciate it. I don't want to install Java if I don't have to.

After that, I've turned out that the application called "Facebook Videochat Updater" will also try to launch Java every 3 hours.

If you've no longer used "Facebook Voicechat Plug-in", you can uninstall this.

https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=247662461917444

In addition, you'll need to delete "~/Library/LaunchAgents/com.facebook.videochat.UserName" file.

I hope to help it you all.

A little follow-up on my side:

I had my suspicons that Adobe was behind the Java requests on my machine. I kept ignoring the nagging for a few weeks and suddenly one day I needed Photoshop (CS5). Turned out it wouldn't launch at all unless I installed Java. So, I gave in and installed the crap. 😐

At least now I don't get the nagging.

I have crashPlan installed too. But I removed it from login items a while back. However, I was still noticing 'Java' in Activity monitor using 30% of my cpu constantly. So I went and removed Java. Then started getting this popup even without me trying to launch crashplan or any known applications that use java.

@Hugo, I also have Adobe Creative suite installed. So I tried to launch Photoshop CS6. And it seemed to open just fine. The problem is with the CS5 or CS5.1(5.5?) version of photoshop(and maybe older versions as well).

I had this problem with the MLB app. It registered itself with launchd and tried to keep installing Java. (If they told me it needed Java I never would have installed it in the first place.)

The solution consisted of looking at Console to figure out what kept loading, getting the name from launchctl, and then removing it:

launchctl list

launchctl remove com.mlbam.nexdef.core.NexdefLoader

I found the solution here:

http://superuser.com/questions/253739/removing-startup-item-from-com-apple-launc hd