PeteL's Blog : IE6VPC

Running The IE VPC’s on other VPC Hosts?

PeteL — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 21:34:00 GMT

I’ve had a few people email me, or email the IE blog to ask about running the IE VPC’s on other VPC hosts than Microsoft VPC so I figured I’d post this to my blog.

I don't think anything has changed in the images since we've started producing them back in 2006. I'm pretty sure they've never worked on in Parallels, Fusion, or any other VPC environment than Microsoft VPC. For whatever reason, the hardware key on a non-Microsoft VPC host is different than that of the Microsoft VPC host, and so Windows thinks that the hardware has changed, and it requires re-activation. If you have your own XP activation code, you can use that and reactivate the image.

According to the EULA that the legal folks wrote, you're only allowed to run the VPC's on Microsoft VPC, not on other VPC hosting environments. I understand that this solution doesn’t help some of you.

If you have a Windows XP license, I'd highly recommend building your own VPC's. First you don't have to worry about re-activation or anything like that, but secondly, your own VPC images won't expire every three months like ours will. We time bomb the images because we are effectively giving away a free copy of Windows.

Hope that clears things up a bit.
PEte

UPDATE [9/15/09]: I've spent some time investigating this issue, and now understand that the VPC images used to work on other hosting environments, but with the latest release, don't any more. We have a better understanding of the issue now, and while we're looking for a solution, we don't have one right now. If you're using the VPC's, and they don't work any more, I encourage you to email me, with your name, how you're using them and the hosting environment that you're using.

Testing Multiple IE Versions, VPC’s and Super Preview

PeteL — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 21:40:42 GMT

It’s been almost 2 years now since we first shipped the Internet Explorer testing VPC’s so that you could test IE6 and at the time IE7 on the same machine. We understand the need for people to test IE6, IE7 and IE8 on the same machine, and remain committed to shipping the VPC’s!

The VPC’s will remain an important component of testing your sites, because they give you a real, and accurate way of seeing how your site interacts with not just rendering, but JavaScript, and other components in the browser.

But there’s a new option that will work fantastically for testing layout and rendering of pages, Expression Web SuperPreview. SuperPreview allows you to compare multiple rendering engines side by side, or even super-impose one over the other. For example, you could see what a page looks like in IE6 under the same page in IE7. Does everything line up, are the images in the right place, are the right fonts used. SuperPreview for Internet Explorer is free and can be downloaded on the Expression Web website.

The limitation of SuperPreview For Internet Explorer is that it only supports the different rendering engines of IE. Now that’s great, but we all know that IE is not the only browser on the internet – wouldn’t it be great if you could do IE8 overlaid on Firefox 3.5? But you can! The full version of SuperPreview that comes with Expression Web, supports all of the IE rendering engines, and also supports Firefox! The full version of SuperPreview comes with Expression Web, which will be available later this summer – keep an eye on on the Expression website for when it’s released.

The big difference between SuperPreview and a lot of the other tools you can use online is that SuperPreview is either free (with the only IE limitation), or you need to purchase it as part of Expression Web; but once you’ve purchased it, it’s yours, it’s not a service you have to pay for every month, or per use. And most of those online services don’t give you the ability to interact with the DOM, do overlays, and a lot of the other cool features that SuperPreview has.

Soma has a really great blog post about Expression Web 3, and goes into some cool detail about SuperPreview.

Enjoy!
PEte

PS: I’m working on updating the next set of VPC’s. We’re trying something new this year, so hopefully you’ll see them sooner and with more regularity.

IE VPC's - Which Ones Next?

PeteL — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 02:58:00 GMT

Apologies for going dark the last little while, I'm going to do my best to change that again. Lots of stuff going on here that I'm really excited about, but before I get into that, I want to do an unscientific survey.

We currently offer developers and designers the following VPC images:

XP + SP2 with IE6
XP + SP2 with IE7

We're looking at the next batch now, and I'm curious, if we were to add one more, which of the following would you prefer?

Vista with IE7
Vista + SP1 with IE7

Also, if you're a Mac user, and want to see either VPC images compressed with ZIP, or Parallels users, a comment would be appreciated. No promises on these, I just want to understand what is more important to you.

Thanks!
PEte

"IE8" and VPC's

PeteL — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 03:16:03 GMT

Two quick notes that I wanted to get out there.

IE8. Yep, it officially has a name now. Check out the post from Dean on the IE blog.

I've uploaded the new VPC images and am just waiting for them to propagate through the severs, now. I expect it to be live within the next 24 hours.

PEte

IE6 / IE7 VPC's Coming

PeteL — Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:09:03 GMT

Just a quick note to say that the IE6 and IE7 VPC images are being updated as we speak, and I suspect the new versions should be online Monday or Tuesday.

IE6 VPC's Coming Today

PeteL — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 18:29:00 GMT

It's 8:30am PST and the VPC's are in the process of being moved from the staging server to the live servers and I expect them to be up in the next hour or so. I'll update this blog post as soon as they're available!

IE VPC Images

PeteL — Wed, 15 Aug 2007 09:35:00 GMT

Just a quick note to let everyone know the IE VPC images will be coming VERY shortly. Since this is the first time I've had someone else create them, it's taken a little longer than I expected it to.

I hope to have the images online sometime tomorrow, and I'll post once they're up both here and on the IE blog.

VWD Beta2, Web Developer Tools, IE VPC

PeteL — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 02:34:42 GMT

So as it turns out, it's been a while since I last posted. Things have been a little nutty around here. We just finished our fiscal year, and have started planning for our next fiscal year. It's been really exciting, lots of cool stuff happening around the next version of IE, planning for Expression Web 2, and getting ready for the launch of Visual Web Developer.

Visual Web Developer Beta 2

In fact, Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, including Visual Web Developer Express Beta 2 is now available! I'm really excited that they're now available as they've come a long way since Beta 1.

If I had to name my top three fav features of VWD 2008, I guess I would say that they are:

JavaScript enhancements, including intellisense, and debugging
CSS and HTML enhancements
Data Access Improvements with LINQ

I'm really excited to see these guys get to Beta2. This is the team that I was on before I moved to my current role, and I've got a special place in my heart for them. They've done some awesome work here, and I'd recommend checking out VWD or VS Pro.

Web Developer Tools

At TechEd this year, John Hrvatin presented a chalk talk about developer tools for Internet Explorer. It was fantastically well attended, the room was overflowing! We're looking at ways we can rebroadcast the session online to share with all involved. But he did post a blog post a couple of weeks after TechEd with a summary of all the tools. It's certainly worth checking out.

I think my top three tools are:

IE Developer Toolbar
Fiddler
Visual Web Developer 2008 Express (okay, so it's not a add-on, but it works great with IE or any other web browser for web development)

IE VPCs

I've had a few emails the last week or two asking if we're going to update the IE VPCs that are available, as the time-bomb expiry is approaching. I've already started working on them, and should have them online in the next couple of weeks. I'm aiming to get them up by the 10th of August.

This round, instead of building them myself, I'm working with someone else to get them built, so it's a bit of a different process. I've given them all the instructions that I have, and once I get the images from them, I'll do a few tests on them to make sure everything works correctly, and then roll them out.

We'll release an IE6 and an IE7 VPC image again this time both based on Windows XP SP2 + the latest patches.

IE7 VPC Image and IE6 VPC Image Refresh

PeteL — Tue, 17 Apr 2007 22:56:00 GMT

Cross posted from the IE Blog

Hello! Just wanted to give you a quick update that we’ve dropped two new VPC images that you can use with the free copy of Virtual PC 2007.

The first is a refresh of the Windows XP SP2 + IE6 image. A few people were encountering a non-genuine Windows warning from the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) Notification Tool. We did not install the WGA Notification tool on the image this time around. As we’ve mentioned in previous blog posts, these images have had their product keys deactivated, thus they don’t pass the WGA tests.

The second VPC image is Windows XP SP2 + IE7. You asked, we listened, and here it is. It’s built identically to the IE6 VPC, except just before packaging up the image, I installed IE7 on the machine. You can now test the features of IE7 on XP.

Just a reminder that both images expire on August 17^th, 2007.

Compacting XP VPC Images

PeteL — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 21:54:02 GMT

Someone had posted a comment on my blog asking how I get my VPC images down to a reasonable size, so I figured I'd share it here. It's not the most fun process, but it does manage to get a VPC image down from about 5+ gigs, to about 1.5 or so. To start, make sure you do not have undo disks turned on.

Create a backup copy of your VPC image, you'll need this later, and it's good to have in case anything goes wrong.
In the Add/Remove Components in the control panel, remove any software (applications and Windows components) that you don't need
Clear the DLL cache
at the command prompt, type "sfc /cachesize=1"
reboot the computer
at the command prompt, type "sfc /purgecache"
Delete all $something$ files from the %windir% directory except $hf_mig$. They are hidden files, so you'll need to make sure to make them visible
Clear %windir%\ServicePackFiles
Clear %windir%\DriverCache\ie386 folder
Clear %windir%\System32\wbem\AutoRecover folder
Clear %windir%\web\wallpaper folder
Clear %windir%\temp folder
Clear %windir%\SoftwareDistribution\Download folder
Delete all log files (use windows search utility) except:
%windir%\System32\msdtc\msdtc.log
%windir%\System32\msdtc\trace\dtctrace.log
%windir%\debug\usermode\chkacc.log
%windir%\system32\wbem\logs\wmiprov.log
Some log files may not allow you to delete them, that is okay
Clear %ProgramFiles%\WindowsUpdate folder
Turn off System Restore for XP
open the System control panel, and select the System Restore tab
select Turn Off System Restore, then click Apply/OK
Set maximum event log sizes and clear all events
open event viewer
right click on Application and click Properties
in the Log Size section, select Overwrite events as needed
in the Log Size section, set the Maximum Log Size to 512kb
click Clear Log, and click No on the save dialog
repeat for Security and System logs
Turn off/remove the page file
open the System control panel, and select the Advanced tab
in the Performance section, click Settings
on the Advanced tab, in the Virtual Memory section, click Change
in the Virtual Memory dialog box, click No Paging File and click Set, OK and restart the virtual machine
Clear the IE cache
Clear the %DocumentsAndSettings%\All Users\Documents\Shared Music folder
Clear the %DocumentsAndSettings%\All Users\Documents\Shared Pictures folder
Clear the %DocumentsAndSettings%\All Users\Documents\Shared Videos folder
Empty the Recycle Bin
Defrag the VPC image
create a new VPC system, with your back up VHD as the primary HD and the working VHD as the secondary hard disk. This way, there is no chance that any system files will be in use as you defrag the working VHD. Shut down the backup VPC and return to the working VPC
Run the PreCompact tool on the working VHD
capture the precompactor.iso from %ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Virtual PC\Virtual Machine Additions and allow it to auto run on the machine. This could take anywhere between 5 minutes and several hours.
Shut down the VPC and run the Virtual Disk Wizard compact tool

That's it, in 23 "easy" steps, you can get your VPC image down from about 5 gigs to just under 1.4 gigs. These are the steps that I use to compact my images down for the IE VPC's. I then use some kind of compression to (iexpress.exe) to create the .EXE installer.

I've not tried this on a Vista machine, so I can't tell you for sure what you can delete and what you need to keep, as I'm not 100% sure what changed.

IE6 VPC & IE7 VPC

PeteL — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 23:44:00 GMT

We've seen a few reports of people having problems with the recently released IE6 VPC image. At first I thought it was because people were running the image on non-Microsoft virtualization software, which causes the image to be invalidated. But, I got a report internally from someone who confirmed they were running the VPC on Virual PC 2007, and sure enough.

Obviously, that's not the problem, and I'm not sure what the problem is. I'm going to spend a few hours this week trying to track it down, but the short answer I think it that I'll end up having to release a new image. Sucky, I know. But, I do have one peice of good news. I'm going to build two Windows XP images in parallel. One for IE6, and we're going to release an IE7 on Windows XP virutal PC image as well!

I suspect it'll take about 2 weeks to get it done. It takes me about 2 full days to build the image, shrink it down as much as possible and get it to a place where we can apply the time bombing, and then the time bombing process takes about 48-72 hours. After that, there is about another hour to two worth of work to do, and the upload process starts.

I'll get a post up here and on the IE blog once it's done, but look for something mid to late next week.

IE6 VPC Refresh

PeteL — Tue, 20 Mar 2007 23:20:21 GMT

Cross-posted from the IE Blog

In my original blog post about releasing the IE6 Virtual PC Image, we mentioned that it would expire on April 1st, 2007 (no, it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke), and that we’d be releasing a new VPC image to replace it sometime in March. Well, I’m happy to report that I propped the new VHD up on Monday morning. You can download the image here. Take note that a free download of Virtual PC 2007 is now available, replacing VPC2004.

I didn’t make any major changes to the image other than adding the latest security updates. I also managed to reduce the download size to just under 400 megs, shaving off almost 100 megs from the previous image size. This image is time-bombed to July 23^rd , but we will continue to release these images as long as they are needed. They are time-bombed because you get them for free. If you want images without time-bombs, an MSDN subscription is the way to go.

We have learned some interesting things about the distribution process in a virtual machine environment. One is that we currently don't have a way for WGA to work inside this evaluation virtual machine because the process used to create a virtual machine involves de-activation of the key used in the VM. We are thinking about ways to fix this in the future but it's not as easy to do with Windows XP as it wasn't designed to support distribution like this. If there are specific applications or things you cannot install, follow up in the comments, and we'll see how we can address that for future versions.

We did do some investigation of shipping VHD’s with IE5.5, or earlier, but decided that due to the low browser usage share (less than 1% total usage for all IE versions before 6), it wasn’t going to be beneficial for enough developers and designers.

Keep an eye open in July for the next image drop!

IE6 VPC (An Update)

PeteL — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 19:34:00 GMT

Just a quick update to let you know the work for the IE6 VPC has been mostly completed. We're down to the last few steps, and I hope to have it out by the end of the week.

Before we release it, I'll be testing it on the PC, and I also want to test it on VPC for the Mac, as I heard a few people say it wouldn't work there.

It'll be pretty much the same as last time, though I had to create a new image, I did manage to get it a hair smaller. It'll have about a 4 month time bomb on it again, and the same EULA.

Feel free to make any other requests and I'll see what I can do, but no promises!