Can someone help me with ways to detect if a software is installed on a PC. I want to check this from my Java application. If not installed, i want to subsequently prompt the user to install it and run the Java application
You could check for existing files, but that will fail if the application is not installed in the default location.
Alternatively, you could find a 3rd party library for reading the Windows registry, especially HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall, and its subkeys. Of course, that will fail if the application is not installed at all.