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Microsoft provides virtual machine disk images to facilitate website testing in multiple versions of IE, regardless of the host operating system. Unfortunately, setting these virtual machines up without Microsoft's VirtualPC can be extremely difficult. The ievms scripts aim to facilitate that process using VirtualBox on Linux or OS X. With a single command, you can have IE6, IE7, IE8 and IE9 running in separate virtual machines. Install network adapter drivers by opening the drivers CD image in the VM. The IE6 network drivers must be installed upon first boot, or an activation loop will prevent subsequent logins forever. If this happens, restoring to the clean snapshot will reset the activation lock. The VHD archives are massive and can take hours or tens of minutes to download, depending on the speed of your internet connection. You might want to start the install and then go catch a movie, or maybe dinner, or both.
Features
- A snapshot is automatically taken upon install, allowing rollback to the pristine virtual environment configuration
- Rather than having to worry about maintaining a stable VM, you can simply revert to the clean snapshot to reset your VM to the initial state
- By reverting to the clean snapshot the countdown to the activation apocalypse is reset, effectively allowing your VM to work indefinitely
- If one of the large files fails to download, the curl command used will automatically attempt to resume where it left off
- Once available and started in VirtualBox, the password for ALL VMs is "Password1"
- VirtualBox guest additions are installed after each virtual machine is created
