java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver

[arif]

i'm a newbie to jdbc and was trying out a basic program to connect to the database.
I have followed the instructuon to copy the mysql-connector-java-3.1.6-bin.jar to C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.5.0\jre\lib\ext

this is my program :

import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.DriverManager;
import java.sql.SQLException;

public class mysqlloaddriver {

private static String URL = "jdbc:odbc:Skynet";
private static Connection conn = null;

public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver").newInstance();
conn = DriverManager.getConnection("jdbc:mysql://localhost/test", "root", "password");
}
catch (ClassNotFoundException CNFE) {
CNFE.printStackTrace();
}
catch (SQLException SQLE) {
SQLE.printStackTrace();
}
catch (Exception E) {
E.printStackTrace();
}
}
}

and when compiled, i got this :

java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: com.mysql.jdbc.Driver
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:199)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:187)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:289)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:274)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:235)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClassInternal(ClassLoader.java:302)
at java.lang.Class.forName0(Native Method)
at java.lang.Class.forName(Class.java:141)
at mysqlloaddriver.main(mysqlloaddriver.java:12)

please help..., thank you.....