Phew, Java broken and now fixed on Mac OS X 10.1.1 Yosemite

So I was ready to prepare my expenses using my company's Java applet-based tool, when I found that Java wasn't going to play ball :-(

Long story short, but any Java applet simply hung/crashed the JVM, which hung the browser for a while, until the JVM itself crashed :-(

Similarly, the Java Control Panel also hung on loading .....

This had worked a few weeks ago, when I last submitted expenses - probably a week or so before Christmas 2014 ....

So what's changed ?

I installed the most excellent gfxCardStatus tool in order to allow me to enable/disable the graphics card switching in my Mac: -

When the Java Control Panel was hanging, I saw, in Activity Monitor, that the hanging process was com.sun.deploy.panel.ControlPanel.

A quick Google search brought me here: -

java not responding

where the answer to the original poster's problem was simply: -

Please disable automatic graphics switching and test.

Ah, this brought me back to gfxCardStatus.

I quickly toggled it from Dynamic Switching to Integrated Only ( which, by the way, is the default when one reboots ).

Guess what ? Yes, Java started working exactly as before, and I was able to submit my expenses, which is nice :-)