I am trying to implement a local applet to get some information about files

on the client machine, in order to implement a web based utility. The
applet
would be globally distributed to the users.

I have done this using J2 1.3.x compilation and IE 6 with the MS JIT and
setting the CLASSPATH environemental variable appropriately.

However, I have tried to convert this all to J2 1.4.2 because MS announced
it was expecting users to transition off of MS JIT in a year. As far as I
can tell, 1.4.2 simply ignores the CLASSPATH setting. If I put the class
file in the server directory with the html page, it works. As soon as I put
it on my client PC only, it fails (with a Bad Magic Number) the same way,
regardless of CLASSPATH settings or the presense or absense of the class
file. It looks for all the world as if the Java plugin is simply ignoring
the client CLASSPATH, but I can find no indication of this in Web searches.
HELP!

Also it there an obvious alternative choice for doing client system calls? I
do not need the display capacities of the applet.