Feb 8, 2009

HOWTO: IE6 testing environment on Vista

Author: gaweee | Filed under: development, howto

Lets cut through the chase, theres no way to install IE6 on vista but you can boot it off an image (which seems to be the most popular choice anyway), even if other sites teaches you registry hacks and etc, there are still differences between the real IE6 rendering versus the emulated/hacked version. But, what you can do is to install the Virtual PC with IE6 + XP SP3 Virtual Hard Disk.

Once you’ve downloaded both and installed the Virtual PC, run it. Then:
File > New Virtual Machine Wizard

  1. Create a virtual machine
  2. Choose some location of your preference
  3. Choose Windows XP for your operating system
  4. Use the recommended RAM (of if you can spare it, adjust it more or less to your preference)
  5. Use an existing Virtual Hard Disk
  6. Choose the downloaded IE6 + XPSP3 .vhd image
  7. Finish

When ready, click Start on the virtual image and viola!

Note:

  • The .vhd image always expires 3 months as of download, this is to prevent ppl from just living off an image (since i gather the image can be run off other operating systems too)
  • Go to Settings > Networking and choose the active network controller to give the IE6 image networking capabilities
  • If you’ve been developing your website on localhost, then you cannot access http://localhost/project on your IE6 anymore as thats is resolved internally. Instead use your main computer’s IP. In my case, http://192.168.1.1/project

Windows XP booting via Virtual PC  IE6 running on Virtual PC