Java not updating correctly... Or at all?

If you're reading this, thank you very much. I apologize if this is in the wrong forum, but I would very much appreciate it if you could give your best advice on the following issue:

I've been trying to update Java on my Macbook. Of course I used Software Update to try to update it, yet I always get an error: "The update 'Java for Mac OS X 10.6 Update 14' can’t be installed. An unexpected error occurred." After that I tried to download the update manually, yet another error occurred. I don't know what to do. I've searched all over the internet to no avail. Please, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Let's start by finding out what version of OS X you *actually* have. You can find this by click on the first item under the Apple menu, "About this Mac."

I assume you are running 10.6.8 since you are seeing that message from Software Update. Have you done any maintenance on that machine?

Yes, I'm running 10.6.8. And no, I haven't done any maintenance.

I would start with that. We recommend OnyX around here (pay *no attention* to any MacKeeper ads you may see!!!). Run everything in the automation tab unless there is something you know you need to retain (I retain my web history, for example).

Restart the machine, download this file and see if that fixes the issue. The link to Onyx I provided above is specifically for Snow Leopard.

Shoot. I followed all of those steps precisely but still got an error: "The installation failed. The installer encountered an error that caused the installation to fail."

See if there is a "Java Preferences" (or something like that) in your Utilities folder. Report back and we can advise from there.

I opened up Java Preferences and it gives me the following error:

Cannot launch "Java Preferences"
No compatible version of Java 1.5+ is available.

Click to expand...

Thanks again for running through this with me. I really do appreciate it.