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Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

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Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

#101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Awesome guide, thanks a lot! Since the WinXP is just a single exe file, UnrarX cannot extract it. Any idea to fix this besides extracting it on a Windows computer?

Hackers don't search for easy solutions ;) You can use any hex editor to cut the PE file: just cut from the beginning to the point where the Rar! signature starts and rename the extension to .rar.

Challenge accepted.

Edit: There is no "Rar!" in Windows_XP_IE6.exe :(

Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

#103
post #31
post #28

Or better yet, just use https://browserling.com/ which is from another HN member, pkrumins.

This is nice, but it suffers from the same flaw all the other virtual browser services suffer from: No pay by the minute/hour. I probably only need 1 or 2 hours with IE 8 every month or two.

No per-minute plan, but Saucelabs gives you 30 minutes per month for free. $12/month for unlimited. It works great. https://saucelabs.com/docs/manual

Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

#104
post #93

The VMs are designed for Virtual PC, which is of course only available for Windows. There's a script called ievms that will automatically downloade those VMs and convert them for use with VirtualBox on OS X or Linux: http://xdissent.github.com/ievms/

Thanks for that. I was a little baffled why MS would make this images only run on Windows when the people most likely to need to emulate other versions of IE / Windows would be non-Windows users.

I suspect it's more useful for their big customers who need to test multiple versions – IE's most dedicated users are in the enterprise space, where Windows XP is still a major desktop platform.

Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

#105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know about them. They aren't actually the browsers in question, though. It's IE9/10 engine with some stuff disabled.

the sad truth is; anything below ie7 should be dropped. Unless you are developing for a corporation that won't move away from ie6 and then you should only test on ie6.

The truth is anything below IE8 should be dropped. IE8's great... it has developer tools, JSON and localStorage, etc. IE7 and below have none of that.

Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

#106
post #3

The VMs are designed for Virtual PC, which is of course only available for Windows. There's a script called ievms that will automatically downloade those VMs and convert them for use with VirtualBox on OS X or Linux: http://xdissent.github.com/ievms/

Interesting. Is there a similar option for VMWare, or is the format too different?

VMWare Fusion's importer works perfectly - in the past there used to be a concern with drivers but at least by VMware 4 it just works.

Procedure: 1. Download 2. Use unrar or http://wakaba.c3.cx/s/apps/unarchiver.html to unpack the segments 3. Open VMWare Fusion & choose import 4. Get coffee & wait for disk I/O 5. Install VMWare tools & pending Windows Updates 6. Take a snapshot so you can reset it after the timelimit sets in (as noted by Microsoft, they disallow storing data durably for more than 90 days)

Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

#107
post #71
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Virtual PC isn't supported in Windows 8 and I couldn't get these images working in Hyper-V. They are truly almost an afterthought from Microsoft.

Doesn't IE10 let you run the past versions of IE with developer mode? Haven't tried with IE10 but i know IE9 had it.

No: the compatibility modes aren't the same as the real browser - they try but some features, especially things like CSS or DOM handling of errors, non-standard properties, etc. will not be consistent enough to avoid testing in the real thing.

When IE8 was out, setting IE7 compatibility mode using an HTTP header worked for 99% of a huge internal business app but I had to monkey-patch around a third-party library because the code which worked in IE7 raised an exception in IE8's IE7 compatibility mode due to significant differences in the underlying JavaScript engine. This was an improvement - IE7 should have done the same - but it broke a huge enterprise shovelware system with an indifferent vendor who waited until after IE8 was released to start testing (a support manager actually contacted me asking if they could redistribute my patch!).

Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

#108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackers don't search for easy solutions ;) You can use any hex editor to cut the PE file: just cut from the beginning to the point where the Rar! signature starts and rename the extension to .rar.

Challenge accepted. Edit: There is no "Rar!" in Windows_XP_IE6.exe :(

That's because it's not a RAR archive :( Windows_7_IE8.part01.exe and Windows_Vista_IE7.part01.exe are RAR archives, but Windows_XP_IE6.exe is not.

Re: Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE

#110
post #67
post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VMWare Player is free (AFAIR for non-commercial use, whatever that is)

It's not available on OSX, they provide VMWare Fusion instead, which costs 50 bucks

I prefer trading time for money. Fusion is fast and just works.
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