diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
index e024c96ed8c..4053d6f9e3c 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/CHANGES.txt
@@ -82,6 +82,9 @@ Release 2.4.1 - UNRELEASED
     MAPREDUCE-5833. TestRMContainerAllocator fails ocassionally.
     (Zhijie Shen via cnauroth)
 
+    MAPREDUCE-5832. Fixed TestJobClient to not fail on JDK7 or on Windows. (Jian
+    He and Vinod Kumar Vavilapalli via vinodkv)
+
 Release 2.4.0 - 2014-04-07 
 
   INCOMPATIBLE CHANGES
diff --git a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-common/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/TestJobClient.java b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-common/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/TestJobClient.java
index 6f6e31b062d..b18b531abc8 100644
--- a/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-common/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/TestJobClient.java
+++ b/hadoop-mapreduce-project/hadoop-mapreduce-client/hadoop-mapreduce-client-common/src/test/java/org/apache/hadoop/mapred/TestJobClient.java
@@ -23,16 +23,24 @@ import java.util.Collection;
 
 import org.apache.hadoop.conf.Configuration;
 import org.apache.hadoop.fs.FileSystem;
+import org.apache.hadoop.fs.FileUtil;
 import org.apache.hadoop.fs.Path;
 import org.apache.hadoop.mapred.ClusterStatus.BlackListInfo;
 import org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.MRConfig;
 import org.apache.hadoop.mapreduce.server.jobtracker.JTConfig;
+import org.junit.After;
 import org.junit.Assert;
 import org.junit.Test;
 
 public class TestJobClient {
-  final static String TEST_DIR = new File(System.getProperty("test.build.data",
-      "/tmp")).getAbsolutePath();
+
+  final static String TEST_DIR = new File("target",
+    TestJobClient.class.getSimpleName()).getAbsolutePath();
+
+  @After
+  public void tearDown() {
+    FileUtil.fullyDelete(new File(TEST_DIR));
+  }
 
   @Test
   public void testGetClusterStatusWithLocalJobRunner() throws Exception {
@@ -51,11 +59,12 @@ public class TestJobClient {
     Assert.assertEquals(0, blackListedTrackersInfo.size());
   }
 
-  @Test(timeout = 1000)
+  @Test(timeout = 10000)
   public void testIsJobDirValid() throws IOException {
     Configuration conf = new Configuration();
     FileSystem fs = FileSystem.getLocal(conf);
     Path testDir = new Path(TEST_DIR);
+    fs.mkdirs(testDir);
     Assert.assertFalse(JobClient.isJobDirValid(testDir, fs));
 
     Path jobconf = new Path(testDir, "job.xml");
@@ -68,7 +77,7 @@ public class TestJobClient {
     fs.delete(jobsplit, true);
   }
   
-  @Test(timeout = 1000)
+  @Test(timeout = 10000)
   public void testGetStagingAreaDir() throws IOException, InterruptedException {
     Configuration conf = new Configuration();
     JobClient client = new JobClient(conf);