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I'm having Internet Explorer 6 problems on one of my sites, and I really wish I had it installed instead of Internet Explorer 7. Is there a quick way to do this?

Peter Mortensen
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Andrew G. Johnson
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    possible duplicate of [Running IE6, IE7, and IE8 on the same machine](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/574463/running-ie6-ie7-and-ie8-on-the-same-machine) – i_am_jorf Jan 05 '11 at 17:16

8 Answers8

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Download Microsoft VirtualPC. Then download any of the files in Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image. The second download contains four VHD (virtual hard drive) files which have:

  • XP SP2
    • IE 7
  • XP SP3
    • IE 6, IE 8 Beta 2
  • Vista SP1
    • IE 7
Samuel
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Multiple IE:

It is possible to run Internet Explorer in standalone mode without having to over-write previous versions thanks to Joe Maddalone who came up with a way of achieving that in November 2003. Basically, Internet Explorer is run by exploiting a known workaround to DLL hell - which was introduced in Windows 2000 and later versions - called DLL redirection.

Manfred Staudinger perfected the standalone versions by adding IE version numbers to the title bar of the standalone browser window. Moreover, by removing the "IE" key in the registry subkey [HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Version Vector] Internet Explore defaulted to respecting conditional comments based on the version number prebuilt in the program.

It is not difficult to follow the instructions and get any version of IE running in standalone along side other versions. Most of you probably know of evolt's archive of Internet Explorer which has them readily packaged in ZIP files. Now suppose you want to download them all. An installer that would conveniently automate the whole process would be great. Thanks to this comment for the idea.

So I made an installer which contains IE3 IE4.01 IE5 IE5.5 and IE6...

gnat
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Joachim Sauer
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  • This is a good choice but using the VM method is much more reliable, MultipleIE doesn't give a true legacy experience. – TravisO Jan 07 '09 at 21:01
  • Agreed with prior comment. i've had issues esp. with ie6, and been unable to reproduce bygs via multiple ies – Tracker1 Jan 07 '09 at 21:18
  • No one can reproduce IE6 bugs (they are hardest to reproduce bugs in history, and brought quite a few people close to madness), better go with a VM ;) – Pop Catalin Jan 07 '09 at 21:51
  • Just a word of warning: Although I do love the multiple IEs software, it doesn't seem to affect IE6 in a positive way allowing for some functions to work while they don't work when IE6 is installed without IE7 installed. – Darryl Hein Jun 23 '09 at 22:34
  • The one drawback with Multiple IE is that it doesn't support conditional comments. So if you're using these to include an IE6-specific stylesheet, you'll be stuck. – Graham Clark Jul 03 '09 at 12:58
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Download Virtual PC and set up a bunch of them for testing with various browsers/OS's. Once set up, this makes it trivial to test on IE6,7 and 8, various Firefox flavours, Konqueror, Opera, Safari, etc...

See Samuel's answer for a helpful VPC image in getting this started:

Community
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Eclipse
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  • What about licensing for the Windows images? My solution works for Windows without worrying about licensing. http://stackoverflow.com/questions/421945/possible-to-degrade-from-ie7-to-ie6-for-debuggin-purposes#421988 – Samuel Jan 07 '09 at 20:44
  • Sure - I elided the details of setting up or downloading the VPCs, since that will vary based on your requirements, but your link to the IEAC image is certainly a great time-saver. – Eclipse Jan 07 '09 at 20:56
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I recommend always testing your sites using BrowserShots. You can see how your site looks across multiple browsers, with multiple versions, on multiple operating systems. You can do something like 50 tests a day on their free service.

Soviut
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Also check out IETester, which gives you 5.5, 6, 7, 8b2 in one app.

seanb
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Litmus is another BrowserShots-esque service.

Paul D. Waite
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This works fine for me: Multiple IE

Edit: looks like the minute it took me to find the URL was enough for 3 people to beat me to it..wow

rodbv
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IETester is pretty good, compare IE5.5/IE6/IE7/IE8 side by side.

orip
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