 <p>You could programmatically extract the jar file, <a href="http://www.devx.com/tips/Tip/22124" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.devx.com/tips/Tip/22124</a>, the update one file that will prevent the application from running anymore, then rejar it.</p> <p>The other option would be to just delete some critical class from the jar file, but neither of these will prevent it from being run again, as they can copy the jar file.</p> <p>You can't update a registry as there isn't a platform independent way to do that.</p>