Problem connecting to driver

[mennen elkalyouby]

I'm trying to test my connection to the mysql driver, and i keep getting this message:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.NoClassDefFounfError: Jdbc11

Jdbc11.java compiles ok.
I'm using
j2sdk1.4.2_08
mysql-connector-java-3.1.8a.tar
mysql-essential-4.1.11-win32
Wind XP


path = %SystemRoot%\system32;%SystemRoot%;%SystemRoot%\System32\Wbem;C:\Program Files\Fichiers communs\Adaptec Shared\System;C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 4.1\bin;%JAVA_HOME%\bin

where JAVA_HOME = "C:\j2sdk1.4.2_08"
and i also created a variable CLASSPATH = "C:\mennen\downloads\connectorJ\mysql-connector-java-3.1.8a.tar"

I also put the mysql-connector-java-3.1.8a.tar in the C:\j2sdk1.4.2_08\jre\lib\ext directory.

I've tried a lot of things i've read on forums, but it just doesn't wanna work
I also tried executing it with
java -cp .;\C:\mennen\downloads\connectorJ\mysql-connector-java-3.1.8a.jar Jdbc11
but it still won't work!

Here is Jdbc11.java
_____________________________________________________________________
import java.sql.*;

public class Jdbc11 {

public static void main(String args[]){
System.out.println(
"Mennen ELKALYOUBI testing..");
try {
Class.forName("com.mysql.jdbc.Driver");
String url = "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/mysql";
Connection con =DriverManager.getConnection(url,"root", "mennen"); //mennen is the password i use when i log onto mysql
System.out.println("URL: " + url);
System.out.println("Connection: " + con);
con.close();
}

catch (java.lang.ClassNotFoundException e) {
System.err.print("ClassNotFoundException: ");
System.err.println(e.getMessage());
}}
___________________________________________________________________

Please help!!