If you haven’t heard about this cool beta, check it out here.
Basically, Microsoft are (amongst other things) offering up a free and pretty easy way for us web designers and developers to test our websites in Internet Explorer 7 – 10.
Installing using a Virtual Box for Mac
One thing the blog documentation is missing is how to install on VirtualBox for Mac, that is why I’ve written this post.
- Firstly, head over to the link above.
- Choose Mac and then VirtualBox for Mac
- Download any of the VMs you desire, I’ll use Windows Vista running IE7 as my example.
Extracting the zip
This is the first stumbling block, the default Mac Archiver doesn’t unzip the zip at the moment, Microsoft are looking at a fix, so head over to StuffitExpander or similar.
Once you’ve extracted with Stuffit (or similar), move the .ova file to a sensible location, I put mine in the Documents in a “VMs” folder.
Installing in VirtualBox
First time I tried to do this, I tried to mimic Microsoft’s VM Fusion demo – that doesn’t work. Luckily with VirtualBox its much simpler.
- Double-click on .ova
- It should now launch Virtual Box
- When VirtualBox launches, it will bring up the following panel, make sure you tweak the RAM settings to a minimum of 1024 MB.
- It will now probably tell you it will take thirty minutes, it didn’t for me, it took about two!
- Now boot up the VM as usual by double-clicking
- Once started up, make sure you install Guest Additions (Devices > Install Guest Additions)
- Restart the VM and you’re done.
If there are any steps I’ve missed out, please let me know.
Happy Internet Explorer testing everyone!
(Please excuse the Americanisation in the title, but I thought it would be better for people searching the issue through Google etc.)
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devolved Mar 13, 2013 at 12:01 pm
Thank you for this, I faffed about trying to import the images from inside VB for a while, couldn’t select them etc with no joy … didn’t occur to me to just click the image :)
Chris Wharton Mar 13, 2013 at 12:07 pm
Yes, a bit of an odd one that, I tried importing first and it didn’t work so just double-clicked :)
Rick Yentzer Apr 2, 2013 at 1:51 am
Thank you for the write-up. I was able to figure it out before I saw this, but I wanted to give my experience in case others come here for help as I did.
I was able to use “The Unarchiver” to unzip the file. Then I opened VB, went to File>Import Appliance and selected the .ova file.
Although the double clicking of the .ova is much simpler. :)
Bruno Apr 29, 2013 at 3:07 pm
StuffitExpander didn’t work for me (MacBook Pro on Mountain Lion), I did it using The Unarchiver and It worked great !
Juanjo Jun 8, 2013 at 10:13 am
I used https://github.com/xdissent/ievms – it automates the process.
Elliot Wilen Jun 8, 2013 at 10:04 pm
Thanks, this worked well for me. I’d started with the shell script-based method described at http://osxdaily.com/2011/09/04/internet-explorer-for-mac-ie7-ie8-ie-9-free/ but I ran into some difficulties. All I did was take the .ova file that had been created and went from there.
Bob Cochran Jun 18, 2013 at 8:53 pm
There is a document “Modern.ie VM Notes” consisting of 3 pages. On page 2, I followed the Extraction Instructions for Mac and Linux VMs: in a terminal window, type “chmod +x filename.sfx” then execute the SFX file from the terminal window with “./filename.sfx”. This works fine for me on Mac OS X 10.8.4, I am running OS X in 64 bit mode (I started out in 32 bit mode way back when I first bought this MacBook, using 10.6.x., then I changed over to a 64 bit OS X implementation.) So what I’m saying is, other OS X users might need to be sure they are running in 64 bit mode because the final .ova file will be huge. My Windows 7 — IE9 VM is currently installing a lot of Windows Updates. Everything looks good.
Michael Jul 1, 2013 at 7:10 pm
Hey Chris –
I am trying to rearm the XP/IE8 version, but when I run the command prompt it is telling me “‘slmgr -rearm’ is not recognized as an internal or external command, operable program or batch file.”
I’ve tried opening command prompt as the administrator as well, but am getting the same issue.
Any thoughts?
Thank you!
Chris Wharton Jul 13, 2013 at 7:56 pm
Sorry Michael, I’d contact Microsoft with that one!
Alan Jul 23, 2013 at 8:58 pm
Unfortunately, the XP VMs cannot be rearmed. You just have to download a new one every ~90 days. Here’s some more info. (Note the “Time Limits on the VMs” section)
Chris Wharton Jul 25, 2013 at 2:20 pm
Yes it is one of the drawbacks, but still… it is free to use :)
Nathaniel Flick Jul 22, 2013 at 4:59 am
So what do you do when your xp vm decides it now requires an activation key? I thought these were free?
Chris Wharton Jul 25, 2013 at 2:20 pm
You have to re-download.
bbz Sep 17, 2013 at 9:22 pm
First I tried to extract the use Archiver 2 to extract the part files (started with sfx). But the extracted file was corrupt (tar -xvf said it is a truncated archive). So I followed the recommendation on modern.ie and chmod +x the sfx file and run it from command line. Now the ova can be imported to VirtualBox. Before an error (VBOX_E_FILE_ERROR, IAppliance) was shown on import.
Chris Wharton Sep 18, 2013 at 9:41 am
How annoying, I’d check the obvious things first. Update VirtualBox to the latest update, delete the current files you saved and re-download everything. If that fails, the best bet is to contact modern.ie and explain the issue (this is only a unaffiliated helper post, I don’t have any in roads to Microsoft or Modern.ie)
Erica Jan 19, 2014 at 1:10 am
Thanks so much! Got it to work after a lot of effort. (I’m not a computer wiz.) I had to get unarchiver to unzip and then run the .sfx from the terminal. At the end I was getting an access denied error and figured out I needed to change the .ova to allow my username (not just everybody) to have read and write access. Anyway, so happy it’s working.
Chris Lake Nov 20, 2015 at 9:16 pm
Worked like a charm. Thank you Chris Wharton!
Chris Wharton Apr 21, 2016 at 2:26 pm
No problem Chris, happy to help!
Monica Salamanca Mar 14, 2018 at 8:53 pm
Thank so much for this. I know this is old, but I cannot believe that after 5 years MS hasn’t figured out a way to put some simple instructions on how to install their VMs.
Chris Wharton Apr 3, 2018 at 12:02 pm
Haven’t they got their own instructions Monica? I haven’t actually checked but that surprises me too!