I can tell you with 100% confidence the Sun "Hello World" tutorial isn't "bad," but perhaps your system is. I would reccomend uninstalling Java and your IDE's and starting fresh. Have you looked at any of the tutorials I've written for these forums?
http://forum.codecall.net/java-tutor...ial-index.html
The first two should be of interest to you. They go through installing Java and Eclipse. The second one gives you a VERY basic Hello World GUI. Once you have the application up and running, you just right click on the package, go to Export then save it as a JAR.