Running IE6, IE7 and IE8 on your Mac

Posted by Jeremy Gillick on 20 Apr 2008 02:54 pm in Software

I use a Mac, which means testing my work in IE6, IE7 and IE8 is a pain. I have Parallels installed but I don’t want to buy extra copies of Windows just to test in IE. Plus, Parallels doesn’t compress the virtual hard drive so each OS takes about 10 - 20GB of space.

The good news is that Microsoft provides free VirtualPC disk images for each of their browsers:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B…

The bad news is that they wont run on Mac and VirtualPC wont run inside Parallels or VMWare Fusion — but I’ve found a solution! We can convert the disk images to work for VMWare Fusion or VirtualBox.

Setup

First go and download the versions of IE you want to use:


http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=21EABB90-958F-4B…

To do the conversion you’ll need a copy of the Qemu command line tool. I couldn’t get it to work on Mac, so you’ll probably need to use it on a Linux or Windows machine. (you can do this through Parallels or VMWare Fusion too) Download, extract and install Qemu tool on your computer.

Linux

WILL NOT work on windows because it was not compiled to support files over 2GB.
http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/

Windows

Download “Qemu-0.9.1-windows.zip” from:
http://lassauge.free.fr/qemu/

VMWare Fusion

This is the easiest way to go and has superior support for shared network and clipboard between Mac and PC, except it means you’ll need to buy a copy of VMWare Fusion. I wrote these instructions using the trial version, someday I’ll buy my own full version.

The process will probably take less than an hour and require about 2Gb of space. These instructions are tailored towards using Windows for the file conversion with qemu. If you’re using Linux you’re probably smart enough to adapt these instructions to your system. Several people in the comments have mentioned being able to use Q on the Mac to do the file conversion.

  1. Open a command prompt: Start > Run and type “cmd”
  2. Use “cd” to go to the directory you download and extracted Qemu.
  3. Run:
    qemu-img.exe convert -f vpc "XP SP2 with IE7.vhd” -O vmdk XPIE7.vmdk

    • “XP SP2 with IE7.vhd” is the path to the IE VPC file you downloaded
    • “XPIE7.vmdk” is the new file that VMWare Fusion will use.
  4. Wait…(will probably take 15 - 30 minutes)
  5. Move the new “.vmdk” file to your mac.
  6. Open VMWare Fusion and click File > New
  7. Go through the wizard and when you get to the “Virtual Hard Disk” page, expand “Advanced disk options”, check “Use an existing virtual disk” and use the dropdown to find the new “.vmdk” file.
  8. Finish the wizard and start it! (If prompted to upgrade the virtual harddrive, click “Yes”)
  9. Ignore any driver dialogs that ask you to insert a Windows CD. The VMWare Tools should install these drivers for you (see next step).
  10. Install the VMWare tools (Virtual Machine > Install VMWare Tools) as soon as Windows boots up. If installing the tools gives you a weird error, read the next section.
  11. You’re done!

Installing the VMWare Tools

If the VMWare Tools wont install automatically follow these simple steps to install it manually:

  1. With VMWare Fusion running click Virtual Machine > Install VMWare Tools
  2. Open your “My Computer” to see which drive letter the CDRom with the VMWare Tools has mounted to.
  3. Open a command prompt: Start > Run and type “cmd”
  4. Type the following and press enter (change “D” to the drive letter from step 2):
    • msiexec -i "D:\VMware Tools.msi"
  5. The installation wizard should open and walk you through the rest of the install.

VirtualBox

The great thing with VirtualBox is that it’s free and available for most OSes! The process will take a little longer and will temporarily require about 20Gb - 30Gb of disk space. In the end your IE virtual disk will only be about 2Gb.

You might be tempted to do the VMWare Fusion conversion, outlined above, and use the “.vmdk” file in VirtualBox. It’s true that VirtualBox supports “.vmdk”, but everytime I tried it I ran into massive problems.

These instructions are tailored towards using Windows for the file conversion with qemu. If you’re using Linux you’re probably smart enough to adapt these instructions to your system. Several people in the comments have mentioned being able to use Q on the Mac to do the file conversion.

  1. Open a command prompt: Start > Run and type “cmd”
  2. Use “cd” to go to the directory you download and extracted Qemu.
  3. Run: qemu-img.exe convert -f vpc "XP SP2 with IE7.vhd” -O raw XPIE7.bin
    • “XP SP2 with IE7.vhd” is the path to the IE VPC file you just downloaded
    • “XPIE7.bin” is the new file.
  4. Wait…(will take about an hour)
  5. Move the new “.bin” file to your mac. (or try the next 2 steps on the same machine)
  6. Install VirtualBox
  7. Convert and compress the “.bin” file. (This can also be done on Windows or Linux if you have VirtualBox on that machine)
    1. Open a terminal or command prompt.
    2. Go to the directory where your “.bin” file is.
    3. VBoxManage convertdd XPIE7.bin XPIE7.vdi (FYI: on Windows, VBoxManage is in “C:\Program Files\innotek VirtualBox\”)
    4. VBoxManage modifyvdi XPIE7.vdi compact
  8. Open VirtualBox
  9. Click New
  10. Go through the wizard

    • Give it at least 350MB of “Base Memory”
    • Use the new “.vdi” file as the “Boot Hard Disk”.
  11. Finish wizard and start it!
  12. Ignore any driver dialogs that ask you to insert a Windows CD. The VirtualBox tools should install these drivers for you (see next step).
  13. Be sure to install the VirtualBox tools as soon as Windows boots up. (Click: Device > Install Guest Additions)

Now you can have all IE versions running on your Mac. Enjoy!

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21 Responses

  1. Viewing localhost in VirtualBox on your Mac — The Mozmonkey Blog Says:

    April 28th, 2008 at 11:04 pm

    […] week I explained how to convert the IE6 - IE8 VirtualPC disk images to VirtualBox on the Mac. This week I noticed […]

  2. Brandon Beacher Says:

    May 4th, 2008 at 7:27 am

    Thanks Jeremy. Worked great for me. I struggled to get the VHDs converted to Parallels (Parallels kept insisting I insert the XP SP2 cd), but now I’m up and running on VirtualBox.

  3. Brandon Beacher Says:

    May 4th, 2008 at 7:36 am

    Oh yeah. I should mention that I needed a Windows machine to decompress the Windows self-extracting archive from Microsoft Downloads. But, I did not need a Windows or Linux machine for qemu-img. Instead, I installed Q (http://www.kju-app.org) and ran the command as such:

    /Applications/Q.app/Contents/MacOS/qemu-img convert -O raw -f vpc XP\ SP2\ with\ IE7.vhd XP\ SP2\ with\ IE7.raw

    This worked on Leopard. I also tried and was unable to install qemu or qemu-usermode via MacPorts due to a dependency on gcc33. But the binary which came with Q worked great.

  4. Brandon Beacher Says:

    May 4th, 2008 at 7:43 am

    If there is a way to decompress the Windows self-extracting archive (IE6_VPC.EXE, etc.) on a Mac, one could bootstrap virtual machines for IE testing without needing any Windows or Linux setup.

    I tried The Unarchiver, Stuffit expander and unzip in a terminal. All of those claim some support for Windows self-extracting archives, but none were able to decompress this particular file.

    Any one know of a solution here?

  5. darcy Says:

    May 5th, 2008 at 9:50 am

    i tried to install the VMWare tools, but i get an error. essentially, it spits out the help message from msiexec. i assume this is because this environment is trimmed down. does anyone know anything about this?

  6. Timo Says:

    May 7th, 2008 at 10:59 am

    Note: qemu-img.exe is located inside “bin” folder. When launching the convert command, I got error message stating “mgwz.dll” was not found. It is located in Qemu root folder, so simply copy it into the same folder where qemu-img.exe is located.

    I could not install VMWare Tools either. I’m using VMWare Fusion 2.0 Beta 1.

  7. Henry Says:

    May 9th, 2008 at 6:00 am

    I had the same issue as Darcy … still searching for a fix. Thanks for the article!

  8. Jeremy Gillick Says:

    May 12th, 2008 at 10:13 am

    @darcy, Timo & Henry

    The blog has been updated with the fix for VMWare Fusion.

  9. Donald Says:

    May 12th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    I’ve got an XPSP2IE6 instance in VirtualBox on my OSX box now, but it wants a Windows CD to install Ethernet drivers for any of the fake network adapters with which VirtualBox provides me.

    Does anyone know of a workaround that doesn’t involve a Windows CD?

  10. Chase Says:

    May 12th, 2008 at 3:23 pm

    Any idea how long convertdd and compress should take? Mine have been cranking for a good hour or so.

    OR, anyone have their compressed ie6 and ie7 vdi files available to share?

  11. Chase Says:

    May 12th, 2008 at 4:32 pm

    Actually, problem solved. I’m now having the same issue as Donald… any ideas?

  12. Donald Says:

    May 13th, 2008 at 10:41 am

    Chase, I was able to solve the problem by grabbing an OEM WinXP CD and letting the Windows hardware wizard do its thing, but absent that, you can probably download drivers for the fake network card of your choice, put them in a shared folder, USB drive, or something else accessible from the WinXP VM, and install them manually.

  13. Donald Says:

    May 13th, 2008 at 12:26 pm

    One more thing - when I try to run the VirtualBox compact command as documented, it fails, claiming the hard drive archive is invalid for some reason. VirtualBox runs fine against the uncompacted .vdi file though.

  14. Chase Says:

    May 13th, 2008 at 3:07 pm

    Donald, VirtualBox has a folder it expects your .vdi file to be in and won’t compact it otherwise. I forget the folder, but it is listed in the error message you’re speaking about. Stick the .vdi in that folder and it will compact it just fine.

  15. Ryan Says:

    May 14th, 2008 at 12:25 am

    Great tip! This worked perfectly for me - I was even able to perform the entire process on the Mac, using wine/Crossover to extract, and Q to convert. Needs alot of temporary HD space, but it works!

  16. Trevor Says:

    May 14th, 2008 at 9:55 pm

    This worked amazingly well for me.

    The only issue I have is that the VM keeps wanting the XP SP2 disk because the Microsoft AC Adapter is a new piece of hardware.

    Any idea how to clear that up?

    Thanks!

  17. Walkthrough: Setup Multiple IE Virtual Machines On A Mac » Software, Web » Russell Heimlich Says:

    June 24th, 2008 at 5:34 pm

    […] format that VMWare can use and we’ll be in business. The basis of this walkthrough came from Running IE6, IE7 and IE8 on your Mac by Jeremy Gillick. So let’s dive […]

  18. jakob Says:

    July 15th, 2008 at 10:10 pm

    After extracting the vhd by running the exe from MS in windows, Brandon Beacher’s tip above also works to create vmdk images for use with fusion. Just use Brandon’s tip with modified command line options that correspond to your instructions in point 3 above (for simplicity I removed the spaces from the .vhd filename first):

    /Applications/Q.app/Contents/MacOS/qemu-img convert -O vmdk -f vpc XPSP2withIE6.vhd XPSP2withIE6.vmdk

    It can then be used in Fusion.

  19. Craig Brunner Says:

    July 16th, 2008 at 4:36 pm

    Hey,
    To brandon et all asking about unzipping the VPC.EXE files on Mac OS X, I successfully did it, just rename the file to .zip instead of .exe, and then I had to use a program I found called Zipeg, which worked(StuffIt didnt work.) Zipeg is free luckily.
    Hope that helps.

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