My application was running fine until I upgraded my jre to 7u40. When my application is initializing, it's doing Logger.getLogger("ClassName"), and I'm getting the following exception.

java.lang.ExceptionInInitializerError
    at java.util.logging.Logger.demandLogger(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.logging.Logger.getLogger(Unknown Source)
    at com.company.Application.Applet.<clinit>(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
    at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.executeApplication(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.executeMainClass(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.doLaunchApp(Unknown Source)
    at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
    at java.util.logging.Logger.setParent(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.logging.LogManager$6.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at java.util.logging.LogManager.doSetParent(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.logging.LogManager.access$1100(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.logging.LogManager$LogNode.walkAndSetParent(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.logging.LogManager$LoggerContext.addLocalLogger(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.logging.LogManager$LoggerContext.addLocalLogger(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.logging.LogManager.addLogger(Unknown Source)
    at java.util.logging.LogManager$1.run(Unknown Source)
    at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
    at java.util.logging.LogManager.<clinit>(Unknown Source)

The exception is coming from this line:

private static Logger logger = Logger.getLogger(Applet.class.getName());

Could it be because of any sideeffects with fix http://bugs.sun.com/bugdatabase/view_bug.do?bug_id=8017174 ?

A workaround is to open the java control center and enable logging. This is a concern since by default "Enable Logging" is unchecked. If I select "Enable Logging", the application starts fine.