IFS Developer Studio's installer crashes with a "Comparison method violates its general contract" error and won't complete, even after retrying multiple times.

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Answer

This has been traced to a broken/dangling desktop shortcut (one pointing at a file or folder that no longer exists) confusing the installer's internal file-chooser/shell-folder-sorting logic — deleting stale desktop shortcuts that point at nonexistent targets, one by one, has resolved this exact installer crash; it's an obscure but real root cause worth checking before assuming a deeper environment or Java-version problem.

Documentation-based answer. Confirm the product and release before applying it. This answer has not been verified in an IFS environment.

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