Thanks Alex, that's what I was doing and your suggestion in fact did help. Now the server starts up without any problem but throws exception when doing the JMX MBean Operation Result list(). Here is the exception stacks:

22:00:25,266 ERROR [JNDIView] JNDIView.getHAJndiAttributes() failed
java.lang.NullPointerException: name cannot be null
 at javax.management.ObjectName.construct(ObjectName.java:342)
 at javax.management.ObjectName.<init>(ObjectName.java:1304)
 at org.jboss.naming.JNDIView.getHAJndiAttributes(JNDIView.java:836)
 at org.jboss.naming.JNDIView.getHAUrl(JNDIView.java:811)
 at org.jboss.naming.JNDIView.list(JNDIView.java:193)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
 at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(NativeMethodAccessorImpl.java:39)
 at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.java:25)
 at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:585)
 at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ReflectedDispatcher.invoke(ReflectedDispatcher.java:155)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.dispatch(Invocation.java:94)
 at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.AbstractInterceptor.invoke(AbstractInterceptor.java:133)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:88)
 at org.jboss.mx.interceptor.ModelMBeanOperationInterceptor.invoke(ModelMBeanOperationInterceptor.java:142)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.Invocation.invoke(Invocation.java:88)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.AbstractMBeanInvoker.invoke(AbstractMBeanInvoker.java:264)
 at org.jboss.mx.server.MBeanServerImpl.invoke(MBeanServerImpl.java:659)
 at org.jboss.jmx.adaptor.control.Server.invokeOpByName(Server.java:258)
 at org.jboss.jmx.adaptor.control.Server.invokeOp(Server.java:223)
 at org.jboss.jmx.adaptor.html.HtmlAdaptorServlet.invokeOp(HtmlAdaptorServlet.java:262)
 at org.jboss.jmx.adaptor.html.HtmlAdaptorServlet.processRequest(HtmlAdaptorServlet.java:100)
 at org.jboss.jmx.adaptor.html.HtmlAdaptorServlet.doPost(HtmlAdaptorServlet.java:82)
 at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:717)
 at javax.servlet.http.HttpServlet.service(HttpServlet.java:810)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:252)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:173)
 at org.jboss.web.tomcat.filters.ReplyHeaderFilter.doFilter(ReplyHeaderFilter.java:96)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:202)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:173)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:213)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:178)
 at org.jboss.web.tomcat.security.SecurityAssociationValve.invoke(SecurityAssociationValve.java:175)
 at org.jboss.web.tomcat.security.JaccContextValve.invoke(JaccContextValve.java:74)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:126)
 at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:105)
 at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:107)
 at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:148)
 at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.process(Http11Processor.java:869)
 at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11BaseProtocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.processConnection(Http11BaseProtocol.java:664)
 at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.PoolTcpEndpoint.processSocket(PoolTcpEndpoint.java:527)
 at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.MasterSlaveWorkerThread.run(MasterSlaveWorkerThread.java:112)
 at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:595)

any idea what's cauing this? what's the resolution or wayaround it? by the way I have not downloaded the jems installer you have suggested.hopefully this is not the cause.

thanks.

is there a fix for this? I didn't see any on the link you provided.
thanks.