Run IE6 and IE7 on Same System

Update Jan. 8, 2007: IE6 standalone WITH Conditional Comments and Cookies and IE7 Standalone Version.

Recently I was one of the “Hey what happened?” crowd that had IE7 automatically download and install. Well during my Thanksgiving trip to the in-law’s I jumped on their computer, still pre IE7, and pulled up this blog. Sadly, I was disappointed to see that the floated divs weren’t appearing as they should. For that I apologize to any readers that haven’t seen the right column navigation.

So what to do? I actually like having IE7 installed as it let’s me make sure everything’s working on sites I develop. Of course I need to also be able to make sure that everything works on pre-IE7 as well.

So I head over to Evolt.org and pickup a Standalone version of IE6. All you need to do is extract the files to a directory and then run the IE6 executable to open IE6. Of course you can get a variety of versions of standalone IE versions if you need. I’ve got a membership over at BrowserCam for my extensive browser testing.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 27th, 2006.
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31 Comments

  1. Ryan McLaughlin, December 15, 2006:

    Thanks a ton, glad I found this method rather than downloading all that virtualized garbage.

  2. Vernon, December 15, 2006:

    Hey Ryan -

    Glad it’s of help! I didn’t want to deal with that virtualized garbage myself. Not to mention that there is a timelimit on how long it works. Ridiculous!

  3. JO, December 15, 2006:

    This is a lot better than virtualization for sure! I just wish there was a way to reverse the roles of I.E, run version 6 as the “installed” version and version 7 as the “standalone” version.

  4. Vernon, December 15, 2006:

    Hey JO -

    Your not kidding! I’ve gotten in contact with the team over at Evolt about the possibility of a standalone IE7. I’ll post back when I hear back.

  5. Gustav, January 4, 2007:

    Well browser it self works, but cookies does not register. And I need cookies to test my sites. :( Too bad.

  6. Vernon, January 4, 2007:

    Sorry to hear that Gustav. I’ve been scouring the web trying to find a standalone version of IE7 so that IE6 could be the main version. So far I’ve had no luck. Let me know if you ever see one. Luckily, I’ve got three computers in my office, so I’ve kept an actual version of IE6 on one of those. I haven’t ran into any problems using the IE6 standalone yet though. I generally use it for testing layout.

  7. jkiel, January 13, 2007:

    I am working on a new website and was afraid what IE6 was going to do with it but did not have IE6 around anymore….download 495mb + VM and found this before I installed it…whew! This is really, really awesome! Thanks!

  8. kecl, April 5, 2007:

    Great product, thankyou. However much things do not work. Such as opacity. However the product is good for fast error testing.

  9. Vernon, April 5, 2007:

    kecl - Glad you find it helpful. I’m not necessarily sure the opacity thing is an error with the IE6 browser though. What type of opacity are you dealing with CSS, PNG? Are you using a workaround that gets around the opacity problems that IE6 has and still experiencing the problems?

  10. Cyril, May 2, 2007:

    as far as my experience with IE6 and IE7 i haven’t tried this standalone version of ie6, yet i’ve tried the multiple IE where you can download it from here: http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

    it also have problems dealing with opacity, cookies and most annoying of all it gives error pop-up when javascript is activated. so to what Kercl was saying i reckon this standalone of ie6 is pretty much the same version from the Multiple IE version. which is crippled

  11. Rob, June 17, 2007:

    I downloaded the standalone version of IE6 but can’t get it to connect. IE7 connects fine and I setup IE6 the same way. Any special configuration that I need to know about?

  12. Matt, July 4, 2007:

    It might be worth being careful using files like this because I heard that things like PNG Alpha transparency were fixed when IE7 is installed, and IE6 or below would not display the same as it would for users without IE7 installed. And Multiple_IE doesn’t work on vista.

  13. Greg, July 4, 2007:

    Won’t fire IE 6 with Vista Home Premium.

    Warnings include “The application failed to initialise properly (0Xc0000142). Click Ok to terminate the application. “

  14. Niklas, July 18, 2007:

    I doubt that this is really working. If you run IE6 this way and go under Help - About Internet Explorer it will tell you that it’s still version 7 running.

  15. Vernon, July 18, 2007:

    I believe it reads that because IE7 is the main browser is installed. I’m pretty sure that it does work properly though as things such a PNG transparency, padding and margins appear as they would in IE6.

  16. Robyn, July 27, 2007:

    I’m running this version Windows Vista Home Premium and it gives me this error:

    Warnings include “The application failed to initialise properly (0Xc0000142). Click Ok to terminate the application. “

    What do I do? Please help, I need to be able to test IE6 and IE7.

  17. Vernon, July 30, 2007:

    Hi Robyn -

    Unfortunately, from what I can find out, this isn’t supported on Windows Vista. In the comments section from the Tredosoft website there are some instructions that tell you how you can run IE6 on Vista.

    http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE?page=2#comment-2619

    Hopefully it will be of help.

    Vernon

  18. Aaron Bobrink, August 9, 2007:

    Niklas,
    The IE6 standalone from evolt works just fine. It does use the IE6 rendering engine, and not the IE7 engine despite what the About menu says. The About menu gets it’s info from the registry somewhere, but I haven’t found out where yet.

    The only problem I had was getting conditional comments to work in the IE6, IE5.5, and IE5 standalones. Luckily there is an easy fix.

    Simply delete the following registry key:

    HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Version Vector\IE

    By Deleting this key, each executable is forced to use its own version number instead of the one set in the registry.

    (This doesn’t change the Help -> About IE menu; that will remain incorrect)

  19. Vernon, August 9, 2007:

    Hey Aaron -

    Thanks for such a great comment!

    Vernon

  20. Jørgen, November 6, 2007:

    My evolt standalone IE6 version doesn’t accept cookies. Do anyone know how I can fix that? Any other good standalone versions out there?

  21. Vernon, November 6, 2007:

    Jorgen, take a look at this post (http://vernonkesner.com/89/ie6-standalone-with-cookies.php) it is a different standalone with conditions and cookies. Hope it helps!

  22. Kate, March 19, 2008:

    Hey- thanks, this standalone version is great. I am pretty new to web publishing and I’m having a hell of a time getting my css div blocks to work correctly in IE6. They keep shifting over and knocking other div blocks down. Have you found any resources to help me figure out why this is happening? Thanks!

  23. Vernon, March 20, 2008:

    Hey Kate… Thanks for your comment! I’ve just sent you an email about your IE6 div problems. Let me know if it helps.

  24. dennis, March 21, 2008:

    hey folks … you just cant run a stand alone version of IE6 thinking it will suit your testing purposes … not only cookies but a lot of DOM and Java.Script wont work properly … it still will ’suck on’ libraries that are found via registry that is pointing to your local installation of IE7.

    this is why ‘multible_IE’ was invoked as a project for developers, but still this is not a 100% solution to some problems….

    So … better just forget about these tricks and download the “virtual pc garbage” … aint no way around it to have a proper solution …

    wonder why this is still an issues for you guys in 2008 …

    Myself, I am running OS-X and WindowsXP/IE6 + Vista/IE7 via Parallels in coherence Mode …

    But having to admit: mine is a MacBook Pro with 2,4 GHz Dual Core and 4Gig Ram.

    greetz
    dennis

  25. Jenni, July 22, 2008:

    So, Dennis–you’re running Vista? I’m not familiar with Parallels…

    I’m running a Dell XPS with 3 Gig ram, also 2.4 Ghz Dual Core.
    Any thoughts?

    I read one report early this year that stated that IE6 was down to 4-7% usage, so I stopped testing it… then have received a few complaints about my site! I found another report that lists 24% IE6 usage, so figure I’d better get my site, as well as those I’m building, up to par . Thought I was done having to hassle with that again!

    Thanks,

    Jenni
    http://www.TheWebLotus.com

  26. Jason, July 23, 2008:

    Thanks so much for this. Will help greatly with building in testing websites. I just want an IE release that will work properly. :)

  27. Bijl, August 25, 2008:

    HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Version has the version number which is displayed in the Help->Info.

  28. wq, August 31, 2008:

    This doesn’t work on my IE6-specific apps. :(

  29. Vernon, September 2, 2008:

    @wq - Are you using the standalone from Evolt or the one from the updated post from Tredosoft? Love to hear any specifics about what’s not working. The link to the Tredosoft version is: http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

  30. Rob Cluett, December 13, 2008:

    Here’s more, try and delete the IE6 executable when you have IE7 open and it chokes… what does that tell you?

  31. Ian, February 28, 2009:

    Just use http://www.xenocode.com/browsers/

    You can run older version of IE in Vista and Windows 7 :)

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