Comments on: Run Internet Explorer 6 (or IE7, or IE8) images in VMware Fusion on Mac OS X

By: Ryan Parman

Ryan Parman — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 14:01:41 +0000

Updated the link. Thanks Kaleb!

By: Kaleb Kajero

Kaleb Kajero — Wed, 15 Sep 2010 12:03:28 +0000

In the update about Microsoft’s broken VPC images, the link no longer works. It just redirects to the blog’s homepage: http://petelepage.com/blog/.

Try http://petelepage.com/blog/2009/09/running-the-ie-vpcs-on-other-vpc-hosts/ instead.

By: Chris Mackintosh

Chris Mackintosh — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:01:30 +0000

@Mrm Tester Yeah, I’m getting the same activation warning with the new mages as well.

By: Bookmarks for August 12th through September 3rd at Ed Smiley’s Blog

Bookmarks for August 12th through September 3rd at Ed Smiley’s Blog — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:11:02 +0000

[...] Run Internet Explorer 6 (or IE7, or IE8) images in VMware Fusion on Mac OS X – Ryan Parman – Because of that, we need to go the long way. We’ll download the “officially sanctioned” VirtualPC images containing a time-limited version of Windows XP SP3 and Internet Explorer 6.0, and then we’ll convert these images to the kind that work with VMware Fusion (which works on Mac OS X). This should only need to be done every 3 or 4 months when the images expire. [...]

By: Mrm Tester

Mrm Tester — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:21:22 +0000

the windows drivers and mouse.reg are invaluable, thanks so much for posting them. i’ve used the IE images in vmware like this for some time now, but it was always the drivers that caused the headaches afterwards.

also, has anyone tried with the latest images (expire Jan, 10, 2010)? i just tried for IE6, 7 and 8. no problems with the drivers, but all of the sudden each install is asking me to activate windows. it will not boot the OS without activation (asking for a key).

By: Ryan Parman

Ryan Parman — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:34:03 +0000

Not yet. I haven’t used them in a couple of weeks. I’ll try to get them updated this week, but you can always follow this tutorial in the meantime if you’re in a rush.

By: Benson Lee

Benson Lee — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:28:05 +0000

Ryan, thanks again for the updated images. Sure saved me a bunch of time!

I got the notice today that they are expiring when I fired up my IE 8 image. Have you updated your images?

By: nelson chen

nelson chen — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 08:50:23 +0000

1) Download Image of choice.
2) Rename exe to .rar
3) Use MacPar Deluxe to unrar (it’s a frontend to unrar so you don’t have to deal with the scary terminal)
4) Install Virtualbox
5) Add the VHD that was unrared as the drive to VB.
6) Setup a WinXP guest using that VHD.
7) Boot
when you get to the big notepad eula, mash alt f4.
9) install the additions and reboot. It’s fully working now.

these instructions are for the cheap mac user (oxymoron) who doesn’t have another WinXP install, nor VMWare Fusion.

By: adoption curve dot net » Blog Archive » links for 2009-08-06

adoption curve dot net » Blog Archive » links for 2009-08-06 — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 00:08:38 +0000

[...] Run Internet Explorer 6 (or IE7, or IE8) images in VMware Fusion on Mac OS X – Ryan Parman "By now, most front-end web developers have heard of the Standalone Internet Explorers (Wikipedia article). Although these are incredibly useful, they’ve always been hacky at best. [...]

By: Ryan Parman

Ryan Parman — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:34:13 +0000

Actually, I’m serving these from Amazon CloudFront, so I’m not too worried about the bandwidth, but thanks for the offer!

By: xllewellyn

xllewellyn — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 09:48:32 +0000

thanks for the pre-formatted images!

if you are interested, I can upload these images to rapidshare and give you the links for your users. Just in case you are having bandwidth limititations although looks like a fast server, this stuff is downloading at 2mb/s)

thanks again!

By: Ryan Parman - Flailing Wildly – Run Internet Explorer 6 (or IE7, or IE8) images in VirtualBox on Mac OS X

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 04:33:18 +0000

[...] you’ve not yet read the related post, “Run Internet Explorer 6 (or IE7, or IE8) images in VMWare Fusion on Mac OS X,” you should. This is a follow up on how to take those virtual machines (which we’ve [...]

By: xabooth

xabooth — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 20:57:26 +0000

Thanks for this, much appreciated-
I used to use crossover to test ie6 as well as multiple IE’s, but as you said, it’s sketchy. Thanks again.

By: Juan Mendes

Juan Mendes — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 15:44:55 +0000

@Oliver Kavanagh

Your approach of having multiple IEs in one machine is not ideal. The multiple versions of IE still share a number of files so the bugs you’ll see aren’t exactly the same as on a mchine that only has IE6, or 7 or 8. Even IE8 behaves slightly different when in IE7 mode. Since I use windows, I chose to install three separate VirtualBox images, one with each IE. That’s why I think the author’s suggestion is the best option.

By: Oliver Kavanagh

Oliver Kavanagh — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 07:57:52 +0000

Good post! Another good way I have found at the moment is..

1. Download the Windows 7 Release Candidate
2. Install this as a disc image in VMWare or Parallels 4
3. This comes pre-installed with IE8 + you can run this in compatibility mode for IE7 testing
4. Install this http://finalbuilds.edskes.net/iecollection.htm so you can test in IE6 and then you have all the IE platforms you need in one Windows build.

The Windows 7 release candidate doesn’t run out till next June.

By: Ryan Parman - Flailing Wildly - Run Internet Explorer 6 (or IE7, or IE8) images in VMware Fusion on Mac OS X « Netcrema - creme de la social news via digg + delicious + stumpleupon + reddit

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:50:21 +0000

[...] Ryan Parman – Flailing Wildly – Run Internet Explorer 6 (or IE7, or IE8) images in VMware Fusion on …blog.ryanparman.com [...]

By: Onze browser testing setup in detail uitgelegd « Netlash Designers

Onze browser testing setup in detail uitgelegd « Netlash Designers — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:27:29 +0000

[...] IE6, IE7 en IE8 VMWare fusion images [...]

By: Chris Mackintosh

Chris Mackintosh — Fri, 29 May 2009 14:50:09 +0000

WOW! Thanks for the pre-converted files man! Works great.

By: orangechicken

orangechicken — Thu, 14 May 2009 06:47:30 +0000

Using tar from the command line lead to a successful extraction but I couldn’t open vmwarevm. I had to create a new vm based on the disk in the extracted vm. But it worked… so that’s handy.

I appreciate your work converting and packaging these (even if it wasn’t 100% smooth – still lots less work for me

By: orangechicken

orangechicken — Thu, 14 May 2009 06:10:52 +0000

There seems to be a problem with the TARs. There’s a strange character in the paths and Unarchiver first asks you to choose an encoding and then eventually fails while unpacking the vmdk.

Do they unpack neatly for you? (I’ve tried downloading them a couple times just to make sure it wasn’t caused by a transfer error).

The strange paths are similar to this (hope it keeps the characters): ./ie6_xpsp3/IE6.vmwarevm/Applications/Zone Datafile â?? IE6.app/

By: Ryan Parman

Ryan Parman — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:04:16 +0000

I’ll post some pre-converted, ready-to-go images as soon as Microsoft updates their images. Hopefully this should happen within the next day or two, but we’ll see.

By: Nick

Nick — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 03:12:58 +0000

Thanks for the walk through. I tried it with the latest IE7/XP image and it works OK. One thing though, I had to burn your drivers to a CD so that the windows vm could see it because you can’t browse the internet or shared folders before you install the vmware tools.

By: Oleg

Oleg — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 23:22:23 +0000

Thanks for the great walk through, I can actually follow the steps without getting confused, but to my disappointment I’ve installed a new version of windows, which I assume will not be any more memory efficient then running a copy of windows with multipleIE installed.