IE6 developer test virtual image from MS within Parallels For developers who have upgraded to IE7, but still need to test IE6, Microsoft has provided a pre-activated Virtual PC vhd file. Parallels can migrate it just fine. But upon startup, the pre-activation is tossed out because Parallels reports a significantly different hardware setup than Virtual PC which requires re-activation. There is no formal activation key and no way to get one. So, my question is... is there a way to adjust what Parallels reports to XP re: hardware configuration? The vhd download page is: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...90-958F-4B64-B5F1-73D0A413C8EF&displaylang=en The site where I learned about this: http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/11/30/ie6-and-ie7-running-on-a-single-machine.aspx
Are you looking speciffically for a developer version of IE6? If not, you can download the regular IE6SP1 installer from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/...cb-5e5d-48f5-b02b-20b602228de6&DisplayLang=en or go to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/ie6/downloads/critical/ie6sp1/default.mspx and click on Download Center.
I've upgraded to IE7, but don't know of any way to have it running alongside IE6 at the same time without doing some wierd registry stuff. Stuff I'm not willing to do. However, a fully operational, pre-activated version of Windows XP Professional that is designed specifically for IE 6 testing is what I'm trying to get to work on my computer. That said, MS has offered just such a solution (follow the link above). So I downloaded the 1.5Gb executable. Decompressed it. Moved it to my mac, and succesfully migrated it to Parallels using the Transporter application. Then, I started it up and the pre-activation failed, because the way Virtual PC reports the hardware configuration and the way Parallels reports the hardware configuration differs enough to trigger the automatic re-activation dialogue. Unfortunately, this download doesn't come with an observable key, XP has already been activated. Hence, I need to spoof the Virtual PC hardware settings when trying to start the virtual disk. Does that make sense?
