John, if you read the documentation I referred to earlier for Apache Commons Exec you will learn that there are unfortunately numerous OS-dependent pitfalls to the use of Runtime.exec(). This is certainly not an area I know anything about but I do find Apache information to be generally quite realiable.
You only need to read a bit of this tutorial to realize the need for expertise in this area.
http://commons.apache.org/exec/tutorial.htmlSusanJ
