Affirmix

Great article…but i need help…i’m pretty much stuck around #6 (dealing w/ terminal). I’m not that strong with terminal so i was hoping that you could provide a bit more detail with this area

No problems Shaun Here are the steps to complete step 6:

1. Open Finder, select Applications, then select Utilities, then select Terminal.
2. In Terminal, you should see a blank prompt. Type in the following: /Applications/Q.app/Contents/MacOS/qemu-img convert -O raw -f vpc OldVHDImage.vhd NewRAWImage.raw
   1. OldVHDImage.vhd: to find out what this value should be, open Finder, and navigate your way to the *.vhd that you downloaded. Highlight it, then click the “More info…” button withing Finder. In the new box that appears, there will be a field titled “Where:”. This should be that value that you enter.
   2. NewRAWImage.vhd: this will be a new file that gets created. It is probably best just to make it the same as the above value, but just change the *.vhd extension to *.raw.
3. Once this is all typed in, press the return key. Some text will begin to appear on the screen, and this may take up to 15-20 minutes. Once the prompt returns, the process will be complete, and the new *.raw file you created will be ready to use for the next step.
4. Now type the following into the prompt: VBoxManage convertdd NewRAWImage.raw NewVDIImage.vdi
   1. To get the paths for NewRAWImage.raw and NewVDIImage.vdi, the steps will be exactly the same as the previous command.
5. Press the return key, and again, be prepared to wait up to 15-20 minutes. Once this is complete, you should now have a *.vdi ready to use in the next steps of the process

Hope that helps Don’t be scared about doing anything wrong either. If you mess up one of these commands, the worst thing that will happen is you get an error – it very unlikely you will destroy anything. My advice would be to just give it a try, and let us know how it goes

Thanks! This was very helpful.

A few notes….

I was unable to get IE6-XPSP3.exe to Unarchive. It just hung. Had to kill -9 PID. IE7-XPSP3.exe went smoothly and quickly so there may be something wrong with the IE6 Image. Tried downloading the image several times. I have the latest Unarchiver version 1.6.1.

It’s unfortunate that MS VPC Images expire in August 2009. Hopefully there will be another round.

Hey Rich, you may want try a different archiving program then… Unarchiver is my personal preference, simply because it a polished and fast little program, but many people tend to recommend Zipeg – maybe you have more luck with that one.

Microsoft have been pretty consistent with the release of new images, I don’t think there is too much to worry about. I think you just got the new round as well, it seems like Microsoft only just released their new batch of images today.

Thanks! Great tutorial, the step-by-step instructions made setup a cinch.

Anyone know any hacks or workarounds for when these images expire in August though? While this works great it will be a pain to get everything set up, working, and then have to do it all again whenever Microsoft releases new images.

Any suggestions?

Thanks so much for this. Saved me a lot of headaches!

The IE6 image hung for me as well, and so did the IE8 image. IE7 worked as advertised. Tried again with Zipeg and both IE6 and 8 extracted fine.

I’ve been looking for this forever. I’m trying it right now. Hope it works!

In their EULA for these VPC images, Microsoft states that: “You may install and use one copy of the software on your device of which you are running a validly licensed copy of Microsoft Virtual PC or Microsoft Virtual Server. You may not change or convert the virtual hard disk image from the VHD format. “.

So I’m not entirely sure that this method is 100% legal.

It worked! It took me a couple of hours to get everything working, but it’s a great, free and lightweight solution! Thanks for the tutorial Andrew!

The 2 things that stumped me where, first, the conversion to .raw. The 1.5gb .vhd became a 15gb .raw for some reason. I thought it was an error and tried it many times, but always got the same ballooning just at the end of running Q. In the end, I tried it and it worked.

The second thing was accessing my local test webapp at IE, since localhost doesn’t work. The solution is to run cmd.exe in Windows, and then ipconfig. That will give you your IP, which is apparently what works for most people, but for me and my strange setup it was the gateway number which worked.

Thanks again!

thanks for the writeup. very helpful. i have some comments for everyone:

unrar will also decompress the .exe files.

the raw files produces at step 6 are 16 GB so make space for them.

with vbox 3.0 i no longer get a BSOD on first start of the vm. so after starting the vm in step 7.4 i skipped the F8 bit and steps 7.5-9 resuming at 7.10.

the vbox guest extensions installer did not always auto-run for me on step 7.11 but it can be found on D: and run manually.

in order to get the network adapter driver working i needed to manually extract the drivers from the vbox guest extensions with D:\VBoxWindowsAdditions-x86.exe /extract /D=C:\Drivers and then point the driver install wizard at C:\Drivers\x86\Network\AMD

I get the insert windows installation cd prompt when I try and install the network driver. Any ideas?

Hi there,

I have IE8 in one virtual machine, works fine.

But I still haven’t been able to install a 2nd one. IE7 in this case.

- Converting from .vhd to .raw created a 16 GB file within a second! unlike the 15 min I expected. Also I did not get any text on screen, just the blinking prompt returned almost immediately.

- Converting that .raw to .vdi gave me a file of 279.1MB (is that normal?)

- Using that .vdi with Virtualbox after starting the new virtual machine gave me ‘a disk read error’ leaving me only the option of shutting the machine down. I could not get to the screen where I would select safe boot.

Any ideas?

Ok, my bad.

You really need to wait for the convertion to .raw (and later .vdi) to be done. Just a blinking prompt is not enough

I managed to get right to installing the XP in Virtual Box, but then it tells me I can’t log in because I need Windows Advantage to register Windows.

After completing all these steps, I get a unique error:

VM cannot start because the hard disk ‘/Users/jackson/Library/VirtualBox/Machines/XP SP3 with IE7 2009-Apr.vdi’ is not accessible (Actual UUID {9a52ef9f-30a3-4261-a679-3cc1af4bd197} of the hard disk image ‘/Users/jackson/Library/VirtualBox/Machines/XP SP3 with IE7 2009-Apr.vdi’ doesn’t match UUID {898f73ec-526c-4f36-a906-c20c9f85b6fe} stored in the registry).

Result Code:
NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0×80004005)
Component:
Console
Interface:
IConsole {e3c6d4a1-a935-47ca-b16d-f9e9c496e53e}

It seems that your steps modified the UUID of the hard disk image, but the registry was expecting a different UUID.

Does anyone have any thoughts??

Having the same XP activation issue as Phil Haggar. Anyone find a solution?

From what I understand a few things have changed with the setup procedure, and the Microsoft images will be expiring very soon as ell.. I’ve been very busy, but I will try to revisit a few of these points over the week, and answer a bunch of questions

I’m also struggling to get this going. Seems that the new versions need to be activated (I’ve only tried the IE8 image – will try the other one now too). I guess we need to ask someone at microsoft in order to get this going.

Couldn’t find any way of contacting MS, typical. I had exactly the same problem with the IE7 install but by not restarting the machine I managed to get the network drivers working and have saved a snapshot so that I can use this for testing. It’s enough to get by but not exactly ideal.

Would be interested to see what you can come up with Andrew.

I definitely “get” all the concepts here — and executed all the steps. I can get either one working alone — but not both of them at the same time. (See my post about the UUID issue)

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Grabbing the latest images now (someone at Microsoft told me they were working on creating the new images last week). I sent them an email last week, and THREE different people responded to me, re-assuring me that new images would be up in a timely manner so we aren’t stuck without testing images. That was surprisingly cool.

Thanks, Andrew, for posting this original article. It’s a good resource. We just need to get to the bottom of the UUID issue. I don’t understand how you’re not having the exact same problems when you try to add both of those to VirtualBox (even after converting them from vhd to raw, then raw to vdi)

OK… please forgive me for making a mistake. I followed the directions on this post, and thought I encountered a problem. Boy was I stupid. I accidentally mixed up the VDI and VHD when I was adding my second image (for IE7, since I already had IE6 working).

Anyway… I accidentally added IE7-XP.vhd instead of the .vdi, and of course, I had a UUID conflict. Makes sense, considering one of the biggest reasons we converted the image in the first place was to allow us to have multiple images running simultaneously (in the native VirtualBox format too).

It’s all working wonderfully now!!!! Thank you SO much for this wonderful post/article. It’s so nice to have a fully working VM for IE6 and IE7 testing. The fact that this is opensource, and Microsoft provides images for free makes it sooo sweet. I really, really like the desktop integration that Parallels offers, but I can’t justify the cost of their app plus a Windows license, as well as the hours upon hours of setup time it would require to get two copies of windows xp running, one with Ie6, and one with IE7. Plus I’ve read that downgrading from IE7 to IE6 can cause major problems with filters and other things that make it ever harder to test PNG fixes, and all those cool javascript IE-upgrade libraries out there.

I suppose if I needed to do anything other than test IE in Windows, I would probably invest in Parallels, because the desktop integration is so impressive. I love being able to choose which app to open files in, I love the start menu integration (it makes seemless/coherence mode so much better), and the shortcuts between OS’s, and folder and file system integration, etc). Parallels is a nice product (I’m a VMware veteran, but on OS X, I really prefer Parallels).

Thanks again!!!!

I had this running once apon a time, but now i get the activation problem previously reported.

Is it just me, or does that mean you can’t test ie6 on a mac, renderinging my macbook a little useless for web development?

disaster, and my paranoid anti M$ mind is starting to wonder if this new obstacle is an accident.

Hey, thanks again for the feedback everyone! I now have a few issues to look into I’m really keen to revisit this section and get some solutions for everyone. I should have some free time coming up in a few weeks

FYI, I get this message when trying to extract the .exe with The Unarchiver.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/augustl-stuff/the-unarchiver-extracting-IE7-65.png

Just for the record, the error that August is referring to says “The contents of the file ‘IE7-XPSP3.exe can not be extracted with this program.’”

I’m getting the same error message. It’s a message from The Unarchiver.

August, do you have Darwine installed? I do and I’m wondering if that’s the problem…

Good news! Found zipeg which lets you open and extract the files!

Zipeg at: http://www.zipeg.com.

One thing I forgot! You need to change the file extension from .exe to .zip in order for zipeg to recognise the files

Thank you for this great tutorial. I ran into activation issues with the latest IE XP images and found this VirtualBox forum thread with some explainations for those of you with the same problems. http://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=21712

Found an app which worked fine with the .exe files : http://www.unrarx.com/

hi, thanks for this tutorial – very helpful, however im a bit of a newbie and really only good with graphics and frontend code – i got to downloading ie6, 7, and 8 disk images, and got a bit confused when i click the link to take me to their download page – there is a huge list of .exe files – which do i download to proceed?

thankyou!

ps – is it poss to email a reply?

Emma

hey, i can’t download Q. is there an alternative to this? Please email me. Thanks.

This thread was a lifesaver. Thanks for posting!

I do have one question, though. Has anyone been able to get this to work with any of the Vista versions of IE? I have all three IE’s working in XP, but I could not get Zipeg to extract the VHD files from the Vista RAR downloads.

Found this solution for the licensing problem:

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MJPZIMOH
Download and unrar the file
Zip the file and upload it somewhere where you can download it again
Launch your working version of IE through VirtualBox
Download the antiwpa.zip that you just uploaded
Extract it
Execute the cmd file that’s located within
The anoying activation trouble should disappear on restart

ATTENTION!!:

From PeteL’s post here:
http://blogs.msdn.com/petel/archive/2009/04/30/vpc-s-are-coming.aspx

The latest VPC images that seem to be available now, as per the IE twitter page:
“Forgot to post the VPCs are up. http://msdn.com/ie”
–8:54 AM May 3rd from Echofon

were from back in May…. as per the IE VPCs page here:
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=21eabb90-958f-4b64-b5f1-73d0a413c8ef&displaylang=en

The now posted VPCs were uploaded on 08/24/2009

Has anyone tried THIS release of VPC ?? Are you also getting the ‘Auth’ issues? Oddly enough, the images I have, are dated Sept. 20th…

Hi there

Thanks so much for this post! Am hoping it will solve my cross browser testing issues.

Does anyone know if the activation issue has been sorted? Also, which images should we use? There are .exe’s and .rars. The following are the options – do I need all of them?

IE6-XPSP3.exe contains a Windows XP SP3 with IE6 VHD file. Expires January 1, 2010

IE7-XPSP3.exe contains a Windows XP SP3 with IE7 VHD file. Expires January 1, 2010

IE8-XPSP3.exe contains a Windows XP SP3 with IE8 VHD file. Expires January 1, 2010

IE7-VIS1.exe+IE7-VIS2.rar+IE7-VIS3.rar contain a Vista Image with IE7 VHD file. Expires 120 days after first run.

IE8-VIS1.exe+IE8-VIS2.rar+IE8-VIS3.rar+IE8-VIS4.rar contain a Vista Image with IE8 VHD file. Expires 120 days after first run.

Thanks

I have another question please… what is a ‘blank prompt’ with regard to the terminal in step six? Like Shaun, I am not not familiar with the terminal and the instructions all seem like a foreign language to me! When I open the terminal the following information is displayed:

Last login: Tue Nov 24 06:58:39 on console
You have mail.
Unknown-00-24-36-b1-79-61:~ Lisa$

Where do I start typing the /Applications… path?

Thanks so much. Sorry if these questions are basic.

Lisa,

Regarding the activation issue, see my post two above yours. It will solve the problem.

I’m wondering, Andrew. Is it possible for you to post the finished product on here so some of us who are having difficulties can just download the .vdi from you? I mean there are still people out there who are going to indeed follow these steps due to curious nature. It would, however, be wonderful to have the .vdi ready to go for people whom are struggling. I for one am looking forward to completing this task, however I’m having trouble with step 6 and for some odd reason I’m left with a .raw file that is 8GB large. This is what I typed:

/Applications/Q.app/Contents/MacOS/qemu-img convert -O raw -f vpc ~/Downloads/IE7-XPSP3.exe\ Folder/IE7\ on\ XP\ SP3.vhd ~/Downloads/IE7-XPSP3.exe\ Folder/IE7\ on\ XP\ SP3.raw
qemu-img: error while writing

Can you please tell me if there is something I’ve done wrong? Feel free to email me or answer the question here. ( A little bummed I can’t subscribe to this.)

Windows is telling me to reactivate because of significant changes, however I can’t hit any of the mouse buttons nor can I hit enter. Since I can’t get past that screen I can’t test this out properly, any suggestions?

I figured out what was wrong again, turns out I accidentally loaded the *.vhd instead of the *.vdi.

Double also, I cannot get windows to activate or connect over the internet.

Hi. Can I translate your tutorial to portuguese and put it on my blog?
I’ll surelly give the credits and link to this post.

Yes of course Bernardo

Had the same problem with no internet. If you go to the control panel and go to the Add Hardware wizard, it should find your ethernet adapter. Then just tell it to automatically find the drivers for you, and it should install them. After that, I had internet.

Hi There Andrew,
I am a newby to mac, but am looking to install ie7. is this safe

one more question.. i see we need to use ie6 ie7 ie8, I only need ie7, ie 8 effects my work site and I cant use it.. Do i still need to download ie8 disk images

i see we need to use ie6 ie7 ie8, I only need ie7, ie 8 effects my work site and I cant use it.. Do i still need to download ie8 disk images

Thanks for the great howto !
Since the update, extracting the images with the Unarchiver doesn’t work (at least for me).
I found that UnRarX http://www.unrarx.com does the trick.

If you’re using VMWare Fusion, the following page holds some nice info too:
http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-7250

Cheers and keep up the good work !

Max

When I get .exe set up for The Unarchiver, I open one of the IEs and for every one I get the following message:

The contents of the file “IE6-XP-SP3.exe” cannot be extracted from this program.

Anyone have any help for that? I’m no that good with this stuff.

P.S. If this helps, I have a Mac OS X Version 10.6.2

Please write back ASAP,
David

Got this working 4/1/2010 — no fooling.

Summarizing all other comments, I changed the following from the original instructions with success:

- Replace step 4/5: Renamed .exe files to .rar and used Zipeg instead of Unarchiver (unarchiver returned error). (Zipeg wouldn’t even let me try .exe)

- Before step 7: Under Marc’s suggestion downloaded antiwpa.zip (http://www.megaupload.com/?d=MJPZIMOH), expanded, burned to CD and mounted CD through virtual box

- Before step 7.9: Run the cmd file in the burned cd with antiwpa

It is extremely important that you start into safe mode the first time and complete the above steps and 7.8 otherwise you might get to the needing activation stage

Happy testing.

~S

Microsoft recently extended the expirations on their images, but now when I attempt to get the image booted it wants me to activate my windows install.

It won’t activate over the Internet option, and requires activation through either the Internet, or a Telephone Representative. The Telephone option requires entry of a confirmation ID.

Has anyone seen this recently?

Otherwise, these instructions have been perfect.

Thanks for any suggestions you might have on this activation problem.

Unfortunately virtualbox doesn’t work for OS X 10.4

Ok I’m afraid that I may not be computer savvy enough to do this. I got as far as step 6 but then I was totally lost. Can someone please email me with a “ie on mac for Dummys” version of instructions? [email protected]

Thanks

Hi there could I use some of the information found in this blog if I link back to you?

I get Syntax error: Invalid parameter ‘XP’ When I type in the code in the terminal to convert the ie6 and ie7. Any ideas? Thansk!

I stumbled across this post yesterday and have set it up successfully with the xp disk images currently available at the microsoft site.

For those stuck with the activation problem, this is what i did:

1) unzip the patch linked to in S’s post (2 above mine) and burn its contents to Cd.

2) Before you start the machine for the first time in Step 4, click on ‘CD/DVD ROM in the right hand panel where all the details for the machine are displayed.

3) Tick the ‘Mount CD/DVD Drive’ box and select the ‘Host CD/DVD Drive’ option. Make sure that the CD you burned just now is inserted in your mac and you have selected the correct drive. Click OK.

What this does is make your CD Drive accessible to Windows when you start the machine.

4) Now execute steps 4 – 8 EXCEPT don’t exit the cmd prompt in step 8 just yet..

5) Go to Start -> My Computer -> Your CD Drive and copy the contents of the cd to the desktop.

6) Execute ANTIWPA3. It should run in the command prompt. Once you have installed the patch you can exit the command prompt.

7) Do not restart the virtual machine, instead choose shut down.

8) Back in the main Sun xVM virtual box window, go back into CD/DVD ROM and untick the box you ticked earlier on. This means that next time you start the machine, no CD/DVD drive is mounted (default setting). This is important because if you leave the cd drive mounted (at least for me) Step 11 wouldn’t work.

9) execute Step 9 and follow the steps as described.

This should solve the activation problem. If you mess up (like I did a few times) up you will have to create a new .vdi from scratch as described in step 6 and start again from there.

hope this helps

and thankyou to Andrew for this excellent post!

James

JC: I have just run into the exact same problem. The strange thing is that Windows told me I had 3 days to activate up until step 12. After I installed the Guest Additions, it would no longer allow me to boot up. Is there another source of images?

Same problem for me. I have Downloaded the image two or three days ago. I needed time to figure out how everything works. Now, I can’t use it anymore because it asks me to activate. I don’t want to activate Windows only to test my work on this **** IE!

Could you post a video version? Thank you.

Now that the systems on the disk images have expired, what options are there? Does MS update the images, is there some way to extend the date, or are we SOL?

Hello,

Just do not understand what is the .raw, i get this message when i try to run the command:
nehalem:~ pierre_nehalem$ /Applications/Q.app/Contents/MacOS/qemu-img convert -O raw -f vpc /Users/Shared/IE8/WinXPIE8.vhd /Users/Shared/IE8/RawImage.raw VBoxManage convertdd /Users/Shared/IE8/RawImage.raw /Users/Shared/IE8/newVDIImage.vdi
qemu-img: Could not open ‘/Users/Shared/IE8/RawImage.raw’

where i should find this .raw ?

Thanks for your help

Do we need Windows XP CD for this to work? I get through all the steps up until “Start” on the Virtual Machine and get a “Fatal: No bootable medium found! System halted.” does this mean I need the Windows XP cd? I am new to this and in the above instructions it doesn’t talk about needing this but maybe that was just assumed when writing these instructions that the user (me) would know this. Nothing against the instructions, they are pretty good, I just was curious for some help on this please. Thanks a lot for writing this! If anyone could please help that would be great.

I’m having the same issue as Lou. Everything seems to go fine until I install Guest Additions. After that it requires activation in order to login. I’m stuck.

i run
/Applications/Q.app/Contents/MacOS/qemu-img convert -O raw -f vpc OldVHDImage.vhd NewRAWImage.raw
this command
it build a file size over 70GB….could you tell me why?

i use VBoxManage clonehd IE6Compat.vhd IE6Compat.vdi –format VDI
done.

but when i start any virtual machine it comes that:
Unknown error creating VM
(VERR_VMX_MSR_LOCKED_OR_DISABLED).

Dont think you need to convert at all anymore. Atleast my Virtualbox v 4.04 start the IE7Compat.vhd file.

Easier method posted here (uses latest VirtualBox):
http://www.xairon.net/2011/06/testing-ie6-7-8-and-9-on-mac-os-x/

Hey,
after safe mode, Windows Vista asks for a password for the user or administrator or admin uitilisateur. but I do not know the password, how to know?
sorry for my bad English, I’m french.
thank you very much

VirtualBox failed to install! Why would that be??

Cheers
Bruce

Installed latest version of virtualbox. tried the terminal commands and the raw image weighs in at a rediculous >130 GB for both Win7 IE8 and IE9. Is this normal???? I just don’t have that kind of space to play around with.
Cheers
Bruce

Cheers for the rich snippet!

There’s an easier way to do this now, using this thing on Github:
https://github.com/xdissent/ievms

You have to install cURL for terminal first. I did this by installing macports, then doing “sudo port install curl”, then I could do what it says to on the github thing (I don’t know what to call it)