SpringSource Tool Suite, Spring Roo 1.2.1 shell will not start

The dreaded "Please stand by until the Roo Shell is completely loaded." message when setting up a new machine with SpringSource Tool Suite 2.9.1 can be very frustrating (Spring Roo 1.2.1).  This is on a fairly new install of Windows 7 64bit and the symptom will be that the Roo shell never manages to get past the "Please stand by" message.

Another symptom is that if you attempt to create a new Spring Roo project using the wizard, the only things that will show up in the Package Explorer is the "JRE System Library" tree.  The wizard will not be able to create the standard src/main/java, src/test/java, or the pom.xml files.

The problem boils down to permission issues in Windows 7 when running as a restricted user and Spring Roo's desire to create files/folders under "C:\Program Files\springsource".

The simple workaround is to go to "C:\Program Files\springsource", go into properties, then the Security tab.  Click the UAC "Edit" button and give the "Users" group permission to Modify (and Write) files under the springsource folder.

Once you restart STS 2.9.1, things should now work if you attempt to open up the Spring Roo shell.

A second issue that you may run into is that by default, Spring Roo expects to create a Java 1.6 project, not a Java 1.7 project.  If you have the 1.7 JDK installed, you may need to also install the older 1.6 JDK (or figure out how to tell Spring Roo to create 1.7 projects by default).