Created attachment 151346 [details]
Test case in zip file

I have created a test case based on speculation that the VM parameter in the run dialog might cause the problem. The original test case is run via junit. I quickly created a main class from the unit tests which seems to work fine without profiling.

To run the test case, you need to adjust the file location of the VM parameter to the location in your local maven repository.

However when profiling Main, I get a different error:

Failed to execute goal org.codehaus.mojo:exec-maven-plugin:1.2:exec (default-cli) on project NullParameterEclipseLinkHsqlMaven: The parameters 'executable' for goal org.codehaus.mojo:exec-maven-plugin:1.2:exec are missing or invalid -> [Help 1]

Which is perhaps another separate issue because it should work because running the main method does work.

My steps (in the original case, not the test case, because the test case does not get that far):

On the toolbar, I click the button "Profile Project"
On dialog "Select Main Class for Execution", I select the main class that I want to use, and leave the radio button "Remember in Current IDE Session checked.

In the Profile Projec dialog, I leave radio button "Quick (sampled) selected, and Filter selection "Profile only Project classes". I click "Run"

Then I get a dialog "Progress" "Connecting to the target VM...

Waiting forever.

Performs calibration.

The problem is in nbactions.xml. In attached project is the following

            <properties>
                <exec.args>${profiler.args} -javaagent:"...\eclipselink-2.3.2.jar" -classpath %classpath ${packageClassName}</exec.args>
                <exec.executable>${profiler.java}</exec.executable>
                <profiler.action>profile</profiler.action>
            </properties>

while when you create project from scratch there is

            <properties>
                <exec.args>-javaagent:"...eclipselink-2.3.2.jar" -classpath %classpath ${packageClassName}</exec.args>
                <exec.executable>java</exec.executable>
            </properties>

As a hotfix I recommend to manually update nbactions.xml.

I hope I did the change in nbactions.xml as advised:

            <properties>
<!--                <exec.args>${profiler.args} -javaagent:"C:\Documents and Settings\name\.m2\repository\org\eclipse\persistence\eclipselink\2.3.2\eclipselink-2.3.2.jar" -classpath %classpath ${packageClassName}</exec.args>-->
                <exec.args>-javaagent:"C:\Documents and Settings\name\.m2\repository\org\eclipse\persistence\eclipselink\2.3.2\eclipselink-2.3.2.jar" -classpath %classpath ${packageClassName}</exec.args>
<!--                <exec.executable>${profiler.java}</exec.executable>-->
                <exec.executable>java</exec.executable>
<!--                <profiler.action>profile</profiler.action>-->
            </properties>

Now thanks to these changes, I am getting the original error in this simple test case:

Error occurred during initialization of VM
Could not find agent library C:/Program Files/NetBeans 8.0/profiler/lib/deployed/jdk16/windows/profilerinterface.dll in absolute path, with error: The specified procedure could not be found.

Subsequently, I change the jdk  for NetBeans from 8 to 7 in netbeans.conf:
netbeans_jdkhome="C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_71"
#netbeans_jdkhome="C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.8.0_05"

On startup, NetBeans then does not seem to accept the JDK specified in the configuration and I am getting an error:

Cannot locate java installation in specified jdkhome:
C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_51
Do you want to try to use the default version?

If I confirm default version then it starts with JDK 1.8 but where does it get that default from? Where is this configured? If I run java -version on a command prompt, then I get 1.7. BTW I have installed Java 1.8 on Win XP manually because the installation script does not support Windows XP. So at least I should be able to run a supported JDK 1.7.

Probably you have somehow misconfigured either NetBeans or JDKs. I recommend to uninstall NetBeans and JDKs and install everything from scratch if possible.

https://netbeans.org/downloads/

Profiler 8.0+ doesn't work on Windows XP. If you really want to use Microsoft's unsupported OS, you can use NetBeans 7.4 as a workaround.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 243540 ***