No, I remember quite well how that never worked as well as you'd have wanted it to. So, yes, there was an installation of java. No, it probably didn't work correctly. Worse, it was probably not updated. With no real path on how to update for most folks.
Such that, yes it was "installed," but it was about like relying on vanilla JavaScript back then. Which you didn't do. You pulled in jquery or whatever and monkey patched some sanity into the environment. Something you couldn't do with Java.
VB had the odd curse of being VB. Everyone was certain that MS wanted it dead, and everyone also knew that if you were writing a VB application, you might as well just make it directly in Access. Which, granted, wasn't a bad solution for a lot of things.
Such that, yes it was "installed," but it was about like relying on vanilla JavaScript back then. Which you didn't do. You pulled in jquery or whatever and monkey patched some sanity into the environment. Something you couldn't do with Java.
VB had the odd curse of being VB. Everyone was certain that MS wanted it dead, and everyone also knew that if you were writing a VB application, you might as well just make it directly in Access. Which, granted, wasn't a bad solution for a lot of things.