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Multiple Internet Explorer (IE) installations on the same Windows OS

November 17, 2003 Views (57,540) /  Comments (11) /  Trackback (0) / Digg/Share


Almost all other browsers — Opera, Firebird, Mozilla etc — allow separate versions to be installed on the same machine and OS. Only Microsoft Internet Explorer (MSIE) is egregious enough to disallow this. You can only “update” and “patch” an IE installation with those never-ending service packs. Joe Maddalone doesn’t think so.

Because that’s about to change. It looks like Joe has found a way to install and run multiple versions of IE on one machine + OS (and I found this through postings on rewind and humanlint). The discovery was sparked by Microsoft’s recent version of IE released to developers for testing their EOLAS patent resolution.

Although there’s no point regurgitating info that Joe has already put up on his website, Insert Title Website Design (and you can his complete instructions here, plus see what it’ll look like from a screenshot on Joe Maddalone’s website), I enlist the exact steps below in a for-dummies style.

Installing IE 5.5 service pack 2

  1. First, let’s get the IE 5.5 sp2 build. In case you didn’t know, browsers.evolt.org has a comprehensive, downloadable collection of all the versions of all browsers ever (ok, almost all) so let us get our IE 5.5 Service Pack 2 from there.
  2. Second, we’ll be needing a compression tool to un-compress the *.cab cabinet files that Microsoft used to package IE builds in. One such tool is WinRAR.
    TIP: It is probably a good idea to have *.cab files associated with WinRAR anyway.
  3. Assuming you have both of the above, let’s create a new folder for our download file. E.g., c:\ie55
  4. Copy the downloaded IE 5.5 install file (called ie55sp2.exe) into this folder.
  5. Now, double-click the EXE file to execute it. It will do its thing in a DOS prompt and a folder will be created for you. E.g.,

    Unpacked IE 5.5 Service Pack 2

  6. Create a new folder in the c:\ie55 folder called temp (or anything). So we have a folder c:\ie55\temp.
  7. Now find the following 5 files in your c:\ie55\IE 5.5 SP2 Full folder:
    IENT_S1.CAB
    IENT_S2.CAB
    IENT_S3.CAB
    IENT_S4.CAB
    IENT_S5.CAB
  8. Un-cab EACH of these files into the c:\ie55\temp folder.
    NOTE: I have the *.cab extension associated with WinRAR on my machine, so I could just double-click these files and WinRAR pops-up automatically.
    Each of these files will actually unzip to a file with the SAME NAME but without the S. For instance,
    IENT_S1.CAB —> will uncompress into IENT_2.CAB
    IENT_S2.CAB —> will uncompress into IENT_2.CAB
    …etc…
  9. Now, move into the c:\ie55\temp folder and UN-CAB the resulting 5 files again. Un-cab all the files into the same c:\ie55\temp folder too. Ignore any warnings that WinRAR gives you about a file “not being the first volume”.
  10. Next, find and DELETE the following 2 files from your c:\ie55\temp folder:
    SHLWAPI.DLL
    COMCTL32.DLL (if you find it, I didn’t)
  11. Last, create a blank text file (using Notepad, for e.g.) in the c:\ie55\temp folderand name it, EXACTLY:
    IEXPLORE.exe.local
  12. Now execute the IEXPLORE.EXE file. That’s your IE 5.5 service pack 2! It may say (in HELP | ABOUT) that it is IE 6.0, or whatever you have, but it is running as IE 5.5.
  13. Just to confirm I tried the following simple code to check the browsers, and it works!
    <? echo ‘Browser: ’ . $_SERVER[“HTTP_USER_AGENT”]; ?>
    And here’s the output:
    Multile IEs on my same Windows machine!

If everything went well, you should now have two browsers!

(609 Words | )

 
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^1 Shanx said on November 17, 2003 4:55 PM:

Skyzyx has a pretty good list of places to download old Internet Explorers from as well: http://www.skyzyx.com/archives/000094.php

Shanx

^2 dr.doc said on November 18, 2003 2:02 PM:

to give credit where credit is due, this idea came from “jobarr” from webmaster world first (as early as june 19th)

http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum21/6339.htm

dr

^3 Shashank Tripathi said on November 19, 2003 10:57 AM:

Thanks “dr.doc”. Could Jobarr be Joe Maddalone himself? I notice that that was the user’s first post to WMW forums. Either way, very useful technique (now I dont need a connectix install just to test diff browsers)

^4 Babak Fakhamzadeh said on September 24, 2004 1:17 AM:

I couldn’t get this to work on a Windows 2000 machine.

The new instance of IE starts, but nothing works. No button, not surfing. Then, shortly after starting up, it crashes or hangs.

^5 John Buchmann said on September 24, 2004 4:09 AM:

This worked for me fine until i just upgraded to WinXP “SP2”. There must be something in SP2 that prevents it from working. Anyone else have this problem?

John

^6 yaoi said on September 26, 2004 1:38 AM:

Nice blog, just wanted to say I found you through Google

^7 Vangeli said on October 18, 2004 8:56 AM:

I had the same problem, John, but managed to fix it by following the complete instructions in the article linked at the top: http://labs.insert-title.com/labs/article.aspx?ID=795. You just need to delete a few more files…

^8 Jeff said on May 25, 2005 6:46 AM:

I am attempting to use the above technique to separately run Microsoft’s and Sun’s java. However, whenever I disable the Microsoft JVM in one machine, it adjusts the other as well. Any suggestions?

^9 Ana said on May 31, 2006 10:48 PM:

Thanks for posting the step-by-step instructions, they were excellent. I am using WinXP and after going through the IE 5.5 installation, the browser just kept crashing. But by accident, when I deleted the IEXPLORE.exe.local file, the IE 5.5 browser works Smilie

^10 Ana said on May 31, 2006 10:52 PM:

Sorry, I take back what I said about deleting the IEXPLORE.exe.local file. Without it, the OS thinks the browser is IE 6.0 that’s why it works, oops.

^11 yogesh said on October 9, 2006 7:57 PM:

thanks for posting the instruction which is need full for me.i wanted to remove all hyperlink but i don’t know that how it can be possible then i search this site through google search engine and i got setisfactory solution through this site.

 

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