Browser testing in Windows Vista – trouble with Internet Explorer

April 25, 2007 | Published in: Browsers & Hacks | Tags: , , , , , 9

Internet ExplorerAfter my recent ‘upgrade’ to Windows Vista I came across a little snag in regards to site testing; the Internet Explorer standalones I had come to love no longer functioned.

This became a very annoying issue for me, as I frequently require easy access to old Internet explorer versions for site testing/bug fixing. But at last I have found a solution; although its slightly more awkward than a nice standalone version of the browsers.


What was the problem?

To put it simply, the IE standalone (found at evolt) would not function in windows vista:

IE Error

It is important to have access to multiple versions of IE to bug fix your websites and make them backwards compatible.

The solution

The team at IE Blog have generously provided a hard disk image of a windows XP installation (with IE 6) which you can use.

  1. First download and install Microsoft virtual PC (its free)
  2. Next, head over to IEBlog and get the image here. The file is a whopping 450mb, so put your feet up and wait. If your on dial-up, give up.
  3. Run virtual PC and set up a new machine (the process is pretty self explanatory). Use the XP image you just downloaded.
  4. Run the system, you now have access to IE 6

Thats IE6 out of the way, what about the rest?

  • IE7 – Your on vista, so you have it!
  • IE6 – On your virtual PC
  • IE5/IE5.5 – Copy the standalone version (found at evolt) to your virtual PC (drag and drop, easy!)
  • Fix conditional comments on the virtual machine, by going start > run and typing regedit. Find HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Version Vector and rename the ‘IE’ key to ‘zIE’. Conditional comments will now function in the standalone versions.

And there you have it, IE5, 5.5, and 6 on the virtual PC, and IE7 on vista. Perfecto for testing, problem solved!

Virtual PC


Found this post useful? Why not buy me a coffee!

Related Entries

Popular Entries

9 Responses to “Browser testing in Windows Vista – trouble with Internet Explorer”

RSS feed for comments on this post.

  • 1 - Mike Cherim says: Reply to this comment

    Gravatar

    Good info, Mike. I plan to avoid Vista at all costs updating only when forced to (I am satisfied with XP and I don’t see a lot of goodness being brought to the table by Vista), but should the need arise this may be valuable for me. Someday I suppose.

    Comment made on April 25, 2007 at 8:33 pm

  • 2 - Mike Jolley says: Reply to this comment

    Gravatar

    I wasn’t going to, but I needed a new laptop, and I didn’t see any point in keeping XP.

    Comment made on April 25, 2007 at 11:07 pm

  • 3 - Anthony Brewitt says: Reply to this comment

    Gravatar

    I’m in the same camp as Mike Cherim! I actually take as much presentation of my Windows as possible I actually feel a lot of unnecessary graphics and elements can slow production when your working on a PC so often.

    Comment made on May 15, 2007 at 10:08 am

  • 4 - Mike Jolley says: Reply to this comment

    Gravatar

    I disagree, would you be more productive working in a scummy back office, or a posh office with plants and stuff. The prettyness wins IMO, and makes the working environment more pleasent

    Comment made on May 15, 2007 at 10:11 am

  • 5 - Houssam says: Reply to this comment

    Gravatar

    hello,
    i installed the these items and the xp on my virtual machine, but when i ran the regedit , i couldn’t find
    HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Version Vector ,
    also can i make a dial-up in virtual pc? the modem wasn’t found, please help me

    Comment made on June 6, 2007 at 2:45 pm

  • 6 - Mike Jolley says: Reply to this comment

    Gravatar

    http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/support.mspx?wt_svl=20324a&mg_id=20324b
    for virtual pc support.

    Comment made on June 6, 2007 at 9:26 pm

  • 7 - R David says: Reply to this comment

    Gravatar

    I have had nothing but problems with Vista since buying a new PC in May. IT took me a week to install my printer, longer to install games, and I can’t get degrag chart graphics to display. I an not at all pleased, I wish that I could go back to XP.

    Comment made on August 14, 2007 at 8:48 pm

  • 8 - John Faulds says: Reply to this comment

    Gravatar

    When I went to get a new PC recently I was told I could no longer get one with XP Pro because Microsoft had recalled all the installation disks. I could’ve got XP Media Centre but they didn’t have one with the specs I wanted so ended up getting Vista Ultimate. It’s OK so far although it does freeze up quite frequently which is annoying.

    Comment made on October 5, 2007 at 2:53 am

  • 9 - Matrich: Matovu Richard, a Ugandan based freelance website designer » Web Traffic and Multiple IE-Single PC Dilemma says: Reply to this comment

    Gravatar

    [...] as I was on my internet journey today, I came across two great articles at Blue Anvil Journal and StylizedWeb about having different versions of Internet Explorer (IE). For a long time, I was [...]

    Pingback made on June 26, 2008 at 6:44 pm

About this site

Blue Anvil is the online web design journal & portfolio of , a web designer from Norfolk, England. Read More »
ThemeSlice

  • Featured work - More

    • Beefjack
    • Integrity
    • theotaku.com
    • Manic Melon

  • Latest Tweet - More

    • Hot and stuffy in today. Cut the lawn and cleaned the pets. Poor puff died the other day. Looks like the meds to cure the head tilt failed

  • Out of the blue - More

    • Wordpress 2.8 Memory Usage

      With the release of wordpress 2.8 some people are experiencing out of memory php errors along the lines of:

      Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 228968 bytes)

      You may also be seeing pages fail to load fully (for example the wordpress admin dashboard) if php error messages are hidden. I’ve already had one case where we thought certain plugins were to blame but in fact it was just out of memory. A possible fix (which worked in the previously mentioned case) is to add:

      @ini_set('memory_limit','64M');

      to your wp-config file. Has anyone else encoutered this error?

    • jQuery Curvy Corners 1.x and 2.x updated and moved to Google Code

      I have updated the jQuery Curvy Corners plugins (both versions) with jQuery 1.3.2 support and other enhancements. The beta 2 version is looking good and is working in all version of IE, Opera, and Firefox (as far as I can tell).

      You can grab the latest files from Google Code here. Enjoy.

    • I’m too nice: Wordpress Download Monitor plugin page add-on now included with Download Monitor version 3.1.

      It was going to be a paid add-on, but today I had a change of heart and bundled it with the newest version of download monitor. The add-on lets you make a download page using a shortcode; it lists your downloads/categories with full sorting, pagination, and search functionality. Not bad eh? See the documentation topic to see full instructions for usage, or see my download page to see it in action.

      And if you use it, please consider making a donation to ensure the continued development of the plugin!

    • 2 Announcements: New Support forum, and feedback wanted for new download page add-on

      First, I’ve implemented a support forum to Blue Anvil mainly for plugin support and ideas which can be found here. Hopefully this will make supporting my plugins easier. Feel free to add to the discussions (there is also a general web design forum too).

      Secondly, I’ve added a demo of the new download page add-on I’m making for Download Monitor. This will be a paid add-on and it would be cool to get any feedback or suggestions from anyone who would like such a feature. My download page is here. Please leave feedback on the forum or in the comments.