>I you ever consider the option to use the Windows vs Linux as a platform for weblogic. Use Linux, it will save you some headache.

This said, let’s look at an interesting error I came across at a client which uses the Windows platform. Starting the weblogic administrator and nodemanager showed no problems. However starting any of the managed servers resulted in a FAILURE_START with the error:

Exception while starting server 'someManagedServer': java.io.IOException: Server failed to start up. See server output log for more details.

Checking the nodemanager logfile showed just a little bit more of details:

<someDateTime> <Info> <someDomain> <someManagedServer> <Server failed during startup so will not be restarted>   <someDateTime> <Warning> <Exception while starting server 'someManagedServer': java.io.IOException: Server failed to start up. See server output log for more details.>   java.io.IOException: Server failed to start up. See server output log for more details.        at weblogic.nodemanager.server.ServerManager.start(ServerManager.java:303)        at weblogic.nodemanager.server.Handler.handleStart(Handler.java:542)        at weblogic.nodemanager.server.Handler.handleCommand(Handler.java:119)        at weblogic.nodemanager.server.Handler.run(Handler.java:66)        at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)

After some research the problem was caused due to a Windows PATH variable which contained spaces.
Example:
PATH = %SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;C:\Program Files\someBackupTooling\bin\

Change this value under START -> Control Panel -> System -> Advanced -> Environment Variables.
Make sure that those kind of entry’s are grouped with ” characters.
Resulting in:
PATH = %SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;”C:\Program Files\someBackupTooling\bin\”;

Adding a final ; just to be sure