Oldest version of Windows that will run IE 6?

P

Patrick J

Junior Member
Hi

I'm thinking of buying a second-hand copy of Windows to run Internet Explorer 6.

I'd be grateful if someone would tell me how far back in the Windows version I could go and still be able to run IE 6.

Obviously I want to do this with Parallels so I'd be grateful if you would confirm that this early Windows guest OS will run on Parallels.

Thank You

Patrick
 
You can run IE6 in Windows98 but it's not advisable.

If you're using it to test websites, your best bet is to install it with WindowsXP and install SP2 on it. It will also run on Windows 2000 but again, it's not advisable as MS made several changes to IE6 for XPsp2.

Remember that you want to protect yourself as running Windows in a VM is just as dangerous as running it 'normally'. Therefore XP would probably be best.

Obviously if you are running XPsp2, do make sure that you don't automatically update to IE7!


.Glenn
 
On the other hand, Windows 2000 runs much faster than XP on the same hardware, and this is true of VMs as well. My Windows 2000 VM runs faster with 256MB of RAM than my XP one does with 512, for example. I would recommend Windows 2000, and would also suggest staying far away from Win 9x, which even in a VM will be less stable and much more prone to security problems than either 2000 or XP.
 
True, but I guess it depends why IE6 is being used.

If it's just to have an IE browser, you're right, Win 2000 is fine.

However if it's to test websites then you have to have Win XP with sp 2 as MS made so many changes to the browser--they even fixed a couple of bugs (but left thousands untouched:-)

It may be easier to get a copy of XP if people get their new Vister machines; hopefully you could offer them a couple of bucks for the old XP licence!

Interesting thought that MS must make a fortune on perfectly good licences going to waste and not being used to "upgrade" to the latest versions (I'm with you on the fact that "upgrading" means slower, albeit slightly prettier).
 
Erich said:
On the other hand, Windows 2000 runs much faster than XP on the same hardware, and this is true of VMs as well. My Windows 2000 VM runs faster with 256MB of RAM than my XP one does with 512, for example. I would recommend Windows 2000, and would also suggest staying far away from Win 9x, which even in a VM will be less stable and much more prone to security problems than either 2000 or XP.
Click to expand...
I think you'll find that you can run XP at the same speed as Win 2000 just by choosing:

My Computer->Properties->Advanced->Performance, clicking Settings and selecting "Adjust for Best Performance".

This will turn off what I think of as the "XP Gumdrop" display stuff, and give you something close to the Win 2000 desktop. It also speeds up XP quite effectively.
 
Hi

Thanks to GlennG, Erich and AlanH.

My reason for wanting Internet Explorer 6 is indeed to check web-sites.

So, it looks like XP will be the one to get.

It's probably true, I guess, that with Vista here XP can be got reasonably cheap second-hand.

I'll have a look in eBay.

I guess I just need a licence number because at present I do have an actual copy of Windows XP on a CD, but the licence I had for that is no longer legal because I was working at a University and the licence came with the job, but now I have left that job and so the licence is invalid.

I appreciate this is rather obvious, but presumably I can use the Windows I've got on the CD and then just use a new legal licence when I register it?

Thank you :)

Patrick
 
If its for testing websites then you definitely need XP.

Also, you'll need two copies of XP virtual machines; one with IE6 and the other with IE7. The browsers are sufficiently different to warrant explicit testing.

Now the licence issues. As long as you only run one virtual machine at one time you only need one licenced copy. They will run concurrently but you'll have trouble sleeping at night worrying that Microsoft may not like this:-) This, of course, is the issue of running XP in a virtual machine: Microsoft doesn't know if it took the blue pill or the red pill.

Be careful when you buy the licence as there's different versions of XP, all with different licence numbers.

There's two genres of XP: Home and Professional. The main difference for you is that Pro enables XP to be joined to domains and run IIS. If you're doing websites, I'd strongly recommend you get the Pro version as you can then run ASP and ASP.NET on it.

Roughly speaking there's the following types of XP:
- end-user full XP - the 'off-the-shelf' version
- end-user upgrade XP - the version that requires Windows 2000 to install
- OEM XP - the version that's tied to the BIOS (the type that Sony, Dell, etc. ship) this version can't be installed on any other machine.
- MSDN XP - the testing version that MS developers buy (generally they have around 10 licences)
- Select XP (or whatever its name is these days) - the version that large companies buy

You will need the Full XP licence version. Generally this will install quite happily in a virtual machine. The original machine it was installed on should be off of the internet (I would imagine that the WGA check phones home with the licence key).

MS used to do an OEM version that wasn't tied to the BIOS. This was the version that would ship from little computer shops. The interesting thing about this was it was about half the price of the boxed version but had the condition that you could only buy it if you were buying hardware. So you bought it and a floppy cable! (or more likely a new hard disc, some memory, whatever...)

There's a good chance that the ex-university version you have is a select version. This disc won't work with a non-Select licence key.

Once you've installed it on Parallels and confirmed the licence, make a backup of that virtual disc. You can the duplicate it and install IE7 on one copy and leave the other with IE6. You can have as many copies as you like on your Mac machine as all copies of XP won't be able to tell that they've been copied -- they can only tell if they've been moved to a different Mac machine (I hope that makes sense!)

Oh, and be careful if you change the amount of memory for the VM as this is one of the factors that XP uses to calculate the hash that tells it that it's moved machines (along with the MAC address, disc controller serial number, etc., etc.) You need 4 (I think) variables to change to trigger it to phone home to Billy again.


.Glenn
 
Hi Glenn

Thank you very much indeed. I have saved your posting for future reference. I think what I'll do is get a second-hand copy of the full end user XP Pro.

On my university version of XP Pro I had IE 4 - 7 because I used this handy package:

http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE

But in fact I only need IE 6 and IE7. I always found there to be a problem with them together on one version of XP because they would share favourites than suchlike but not very well. IE 6 could be a bit flaky along side IE7.

So I am interested in running the Windows XP in two VMs with IE 6 on one and IE 7 on the other. I won't run them simultaneously and make sure memory is the same for each.

Patrick
 
AlanH said:
I think you'll find that you can run XP at the same speed as Win 2000 just by choosing:

My Computer->Properties->Advanced->Performance, clicking Settings and selecting "Adjust for Best Performance".
Click to expand...

AlanH, thanks for this tip. I'll try it out next time I have to run XP.
 
I've always shied away from running the different versions on the same machine; something about paranoia that there's some subtle difference that gets missed. Like some font or other. Hence I've installed IE5 on Windows 98 on a Parallels VM and IE5.5 on another. XP's running IE6 and another instance of XP is upgraded to IE7. I don't have Vister - and I'm not going to bother until it's released as a proper product (as far as I'm concerned it's to be considered as a beta release until they release service pack 2:-) That and the thought that MS want me to "pay" to test my websites on "their" software!

Parallels does run several instances of XP concurrently, but you really start to notice the performance drop it when the second one sparks up.

Generally if your websites work on Firefox and IE6 they should work on IE7.


I've just realised I may well know the university you mean: it looks like we're neighbours!


.Glenn
 
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