Steve,

I recently experienced the same problem when installing Visual Studio
6.0 Pro on my PC with Windows XP Pro.  I would receive the same message
to “Update Virtual Machine for Java”, I’d click ok, my PC would shutdown
& restart *(NOTE: would shutdown without any update messages
displaying)*, and the install process returned to the same window with
the same “Update Virtual Machine for Java” message.  I couldn’t
continue with the installation.

Digging around on the internet for some answers to this problem I ran
across you posting.  I then did some further investigating and ran
across the following 2 links,
    [url]http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;en-us;202255&spid=3042&sid=194[/url]
and
[url]http://support.microsoft.com/kb/190798/EN-US/,[/url]
that steered me in the right direction.  These articles have to do with
Internet Explorer (IE) versions and service packs.

My PC has IE version 6.0 with SP2 installed, but I had set my IE’s Web
content zones (Internet, Local intranet, and Trusted sites) security
levels a notch higher.  (Just in case you don’t know you can get to
these security settings: from within IE web browser by clicking
Tools-->Internet Options and select the Security tab).

I reset these 3 zones to their default security level and then ran the
Visual Studio 6.0 Pro installation again.  I again received the message
to “Update Virtual Machine for Java” but, after clicking OK, I received
a few update messages prior to my PC shutting down.  After my PC
restarted my installation continued on to the next steps without any
other problems.

I hope this response helps you out a little if you haven’t already
ready found a solution to this problem.

Sal