IE7 and IE8 on Windows 7

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1

(Not sure if this is the right section of the forums to ask this)

I’ve been developing on a Mac and I recently bought a Windows 7 computer. I would like to do testing on IE7 and IE8 but it appears that these versions of Internet Explorer can’t be installed on Windows 7. Can anyone confirm this? And if this is true, what do you guys do to test on these old versions? I know that Adobe has something where it can simulate them (all the way down to IE6), but I’d like to do it using the actual browsers if possible.

Thanks!

2

Virtual Machines. Microsoft still has the image for browser testing freely available.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11575

3

I’ve never installed a virtual machine before. Would you recommend installing it on its own partition or simply in its own directory? I’m not sure how much of a security concern it would be.

4

Each virtual machine stores all its data inside a single file that appears as if it is a hard drive while you are running that virtual machine. So you don’t really need a separate partition for them.

5

It turns out you can’t install a virtual PC and XP mode if you have Windows 7 home premium or lower – and that’s what I have, home premium. Oh well… I guess I’ll have to rely on Adobe’s Browser Lab.

6

You could try Oracle Virtual Box instead. That’s an alternative program for creating virtual machines that isn’t specific to Windows.

7

You can install Virtual PC on Windows 7 Home Premium. XP Mode as you mentioned is something completely different!.
Here is the download link: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=3702

8

try VMWARE,Virtual BOX

9

Note that MS has released all of the IE compatibility VMs for just about every virtualization platform, see http://modern.ie for details.

10

You could use the developer tools’ browser mode switching capability to have IE10 emulate IE7 through IE10.
It’s not as fool-proof as using a VM, but maybe it’ll be sufficient for you.

11

For this purpose you can use IETester tool. This is a free browser for Windows that allows you to test websites in all versions of IE (IE10, IE9, IE8, IE7, IE6 and IE5.5). It is compatible with Windows 7, Vista and XP.

12

Those types of tool only allow you to test the appearance of the page. Any scripts will still only run the way they would on one version and scripts behave differently in the different versions of IE.

13

I’ve actually encountered some situations where some CSS displayed incorrectly with IETester, but displayed correctly in a real instance of the browser (in a virtual machine).

It’s a helpful tool, but it’s not perfect.

14

I don’t know about IE7, but IE8 works with Win7. I had IE8 installed up until yesterday, for test purposes (no other reason to use IE, that’s for sure!). I know it was definitely IE8 because I checked before updating to IE10.

So IE8 does work on Win 7. In my case it was Win 7 Pro 64. Don’t know whether the IE8 was 32 or 64.

Paul

15

Hi

I need IE9 for my windows 7

but IE9 is not supporting to my OS (IE7 & IE8 are came by default )

Can any one tell me how to over come this problem

Thanks in Advance

16

Hi there,

Are you asking how to upgrade your version of IE to that of IE9 on Windows 7?

If so, here are instructions: http://windows.microsoft.com/is-is/windows7/how-do-i-install-or-uninstall-internet-explorer-9

17

Why stop at 9? 10 is out for 7.

18

Speaking of the modern.ie site, there is a really great deal for a free 3-month trial for browserstack.com.

This may be only a short-term solution for you (that is only for those 3 months) unless you don’t mind spending the $39/month fee.

[HR][/HR]
EDIT:

Correction: if you only need IE, this applies to you (from the pricing page):

Only need desktop browsers? Buy a Lite plan for $19/mo. Buy a Lite plan for 1 user & test in 300+ desktop browsers.

The browser numbers are inflated though, I mean I don’t see much of a point in testing your site in older versions of Chrome or Firefox (I guess for Firefox it might make sense in corporations).

[HR][/HR]

I’ve been playing with the free trial for a while and it seems really awesome and very easy to use and if I was doing web development more professionally, it would be definitely worth investing into this tool. (Right now I’m more of a hobbyist with an occasional gig, so I’ll probably look for other/free solutions soon.)

19

modern.ie has versions of IE from IE6 through IE11 available that can be run in any of several VMs so just about every computer can run them.

You can have IE6 on Windows XP and IE11 on Windows 8.1 running in VMs on any version of Windows, Linux or Mac.

20

This is the tool I use. It’s pretty ugly, but it does the trick when I need to work with legacy systems that require an older version of IE.