I'm fully aware that this question has already been asked in a way in this thread:
Cassandra:UnsupportedClassVersionError
However, the answer/s given there, which I accept, don't solve my problem as I do have a current version of Java as detailed below:
D:\Development\Cassandra\apache-cassandra-2.0.6>java -version
java version "1.7.0_45" Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.7.0_45-b18) Java HotSpot(TM) Client VM (build 24.45-b08, mixed mode, sharing)
Knowing this, I still receive the error when starting Cassandra:
D:\Development\Cassandra\apache-cassandra-2.0.6>bin\cassandra -f Starting Cassandra Server Exception in thread "main" java.lang.UnsupportedClassVersionError: org/apache/cassandra/service/CassandraDaemon : Unsupported major.minor version 51.0 at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass1(Native Method) at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClassCond(ClassLoader.java:631) at java.lang.ClassLoader.defineClass(ClassLoader.java:615) at java.security.SecureClassLoader.defineClass(SecureClassLoader.java:141) at java.net.URLClassLoader.defineClass(URLClassLoader.java:283) at java.net.URLClassLoader.access$000(URLClassLoader.java:58) at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:197) at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method) at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306) at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301) at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247) Could not find the main class: org.apache.cassandra.service.CassandraDaemon. Program will exit.
I'm running on a Windows XP machine using the command prompt (not Cygwin) to start Cassandra and I'm able to start older versions of Cassandra without any issue (apache-cassandra-1.1.4). Am I doing something incorrect with the later version of Cassandra or have I missed something somewhere in my configuration that is blindingly obvious?