Unsupported Java Version: Cannot start under Java 1.7: Java 1.8 or later is required

Question

I just updated to IntelliJ IDEA 16 which comes with Java JDK 1.8. Fyi, I had downloaded Java JDK 1.8 a long time ago.

I tried to run my plugin that I am developing, and I cannot even do that, I get the following error message (slightly condensed)

"C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_45\bin\java" -Xmx512m -Xms256m -XX:MaxPermSize=250m -ea "-Xbootclasspath/a:C:/Program Files (x86)/JetBrains/IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition 144.3143.6\lib\boot.jar" -Didea.config.path=C:\Users\Christopher.IdeaIC14\system\plugins-sandbox\config - ... -Dfile.encoding=windows-1252 -classpath "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_45\lib\tools.jar; ... ;C:\Program Files (x86)\JetBrains\IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition 144.3143.6\lib\idea_rt.jar" com.intellij.rt.execution.application.AppMain com.intellij.idea.Main

Unsupported Java Version: Cannot start under Java 1.7.0_45-b18: Java 1.8 or later is required.

So, I clearly know what the problem is; however, I cannot seem to figure out where the location to fix this is.

I have tried a lot of things so far; most involve using the search box in Settings and switching whatever I could to version 1.8. Also, I had updated my Environment Variable for Java from 1.6 to 1.8

With all of these changes, nothing is working! So how do I go about fixing this seemingly simple issue?

Answer 1

Set IDEA_JDK (or IDEA_JDK_64) environment variable.
Check Selecting the JDK version the IDE will run under