For Windows 7, I\'ve installed JDK in both 32 and 64 bit versions. The versions are 8, update 20 for all four installations.
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/d
I still couldn't run it even after I set the %JAVA_HOME% environment variable. The problem for me was that I should have ran the elasticsearch.bat file as an administrator. That fixed the issue.