I have not seen this problem. We always update to the latest JRE and it works in both Win 7 and Win 10 running IE11. I've not updated to 8u77 yet but I'm currently using 8u71 without issue. Note: we install the 32-bit version of JRE even on a 64-bit OS because the browser runs in 32-bit mode. We also run the console in IE8 doc mode (compatibility view).
You may want to try adding the URL for your SMP console to the exception site list on the security tab in your Java control panel applet to see if java is blocking use of a JAR due to a security issue like certificate issue.