diff --git a/buildSrc/src/main/groovy/org/elasticsearch/gradle/test/ClusterFormationTasks.groovy b/buildSrc/src/main/groovy/org/elasticsearch/gradle/test/ClusterFormationTasks.groovy
index 18beb2497a0e2..96d2592883a3c 100644
--- a/buildSrc/src/main/groovy/org/elasticsearch/gradle/test/ClusterFormationTasks.groovy
+++ b/buildSrc/src/main/groovy/org/elasticsearch/gradle/test/ClusterFormationTasks.groovy
@@ -690,6 +690,13 @@ class ClusterFormationTasks {
                     env(key: 'JAVA_HOME', value: project.runtimeJavaHome)
                 }
                 node.args.each { arg(value: it) }
+                if (Os.isFamily(Os.FAMILY_WINDOWS)) {
+                    // Having no TMP on Windows defaults to C:\Windows and permission errors
+                    // Since we configure ant to run with a new  environment above, we need to set this to a dir we have access to
+                    File tmpDir = new File(node.baseDir, "tmp")
+                    tmpDir.mkdirs()
+                    env(key: "TMP", value: tmpDir.absolutePath)
+                }
             }
         }
 
diff --git a/distribution/src/bin/elasticsearch b/distribution/src/bin/elasticsearch
index 84e14eea3f6f8..6ce76b6cf01a7 100755
--- a/distribution/src/bin/elasticsearch
+++ b/distribution/src/bin/elasticsearch
@@ -18,7 +18,7 @@ source "`dirname "$0"`"/elasticsearch-env
 
 ES_JVM_OPTIONS="$ES_PATH_CONF"/jvm.options
 JVM_OPTIONS=`"$JAVA" -cp "$ES_CLASSPATH" org.elasticsearch.tools.launchers.JvmOptionsParser "$ES_JVM_OPTIONS"`
-ES_JAVA_OPTS="${JVM_OPTIONS//\$\{ES_TMPDIR\}/$ES_TMPDIR} $ES_JAVA_OPTS"
+ES_JAVA_OPTS="${JVM_OPTIONS//\"\$\{ES_TMPDIR\}\"/$ES_TMPDIR} $ES_JAVA_OPTS"
 
 cd "$ES_HOME"
 # manual parsing to find out, if process should be detached
diff --git a/distribution/src/config/jvm.options b/distribution/src/config/jvm.options
index 2b30d6a87b4a1..e7da20dfe7e3e 100644
--- a/distribution/src/config/jvm.options
+++ b/distribution/src/config/jvm.options
@@ -86,7 +86,7 @@
 -Dlog4j.shutdownHookEnabled=false
 -Dlog4j2.disable.jmx=true
 
--Djava.io.tmpdir=${ES_TMPDIR}
+-Djava.io.tmpdir="${ES_TMPDIR}"
 
 ## heap dumps