Application not visible in VisualVM

I spent a few hours trying to figure out why I couldn't see the applications I was starting (through maven) in VisualVM.

The VisualVM FAQ talks about how you can only see java applications that are started by the same user and running on the same VM, so I first uninstalled three of my JVM's (JDK 32bit, JRE 32 bit, JRE 64bit leaving only JDK64 bit) to make absolutely sure the same VM was being used.

After this, still no GES in VisualVM. I used Process Explorer to make sure maven wasn't doing any voodoo (eg. switching users, it would be weird but not unseen), but no, both VisualVM and the GES were running from the same JVM executable nd were started by the same user. Moments later I realised what was going on:

• I was starting VisualVM from explorer.exe
• I was starting mvn from powershell or a cygwin bash
• When starting a java application, the current process is forked and the JVM will run as a child process of the current process. So even though visualVM and the GES were both running from the same executable by the same user, the JVM was not in fact the same one, just one that was similar.

Starting the VisualVM from command line fixed the problem.