How to Manually Install Tomcat on

Windows 7
Posted February 28, 2013 by Chris Luongo in Computer programming, Java programming,
JSP programming, Web application programming

Apache Tomcat is an open source web server and servlet container created by the Apache
Software Foundation. Its used to execute to Java servlets and also render web pages that
include JSP (Java Server Page) code. This tech-recipes walks through the process of installing
Tomcat manually on a Windows 7 OS.
For Java users who are looking to start programming the web in Java, Tomcat is one of the
most useful tools you can have (and really need) in your arsenal. With Tomcat installed on
your PC you will be able to run your dynamically driven websites (including HTML/CSS +
JSP/Servlets) from your local machine without having to deploy to a remote server. As
WAMP is for PHP, Tomcat is for Java.
Its a breeze to install so do not be scared. Even new programmers can set up Tomcat in a
matter of minutes.
CRITICAL: Before you get started installing Tomcat manually, make sure you have the
latest version of the JDK installed on your computer as Tomcat relies on the JDK to run.
Without it installed, it will not work. You can get that from Oracle here on their main website.
1. Navigate to http://tomcat.apache.org/download-70.cgi to grab the latest version of Tomcat
(7.0, as of this articles posting date).

2. Scroll down to the Binary Distributions heading, and click on the zip (pgp,md5) link to
start your download.

3. Extract the downloaded file to your C Drive. You should see a folder named something
similar to apache-tomcat-7.0.37.

4. Right-click this folder, and select Rename . Name it tomcat (This renaming simplifies
things down the line.)
5. Navigate to C:\tomcat\lib, and copy the following files to your Desktop: servlet-api.jar,
jsp-api.jar, el-api.jar, tomcat-dbcp.jar
6. Take your four files you just copied to the Desktop, and move them to the JDKs jre\lib\ext
directory. Mine specifically was C:\Program Files (x86)\Java\jre7\lib\ext.
7. Tomcat is installed on your machine and is good to go.