How to use the Tomcat windows installer (.exe) ?

If you are using Microsoft Windows, you can download a .exe installer instead of the .zip file. It will prompt you for the desired port. It will ask you what port it should run on, and make the changes in server.xml for you. You will still need to manually edit context.xml and web.xml, however. It will set JAVA_HOME for you. The installer hunts for your Java installation and tries to set JAVA_HOME appropriately. This is a convenience, albeit a minor one. It will setup Start Menu entries. In particular, instead of using startup.bat and shutdown.bat, you can go to the Start Menu, Select Apache Tomcat5.5, select Monitor Tomcat, and select Start or Stop, as shown below. I prefer startup.bat and shutdown.bat so that I can put shortcuts in my development directory (easier to invoke) and / or the desktop.