Comments on: Running IE on your Mac in VirtualBox (for free!) revisited

By: Justin

Justin — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 10:07:16 +0000

Update, 2010 September:

I’d like to add a current status on this for September 2010 as I just spent an unhappy half day getting it working.

- The BSOD does not happen anymore
- The Microsoft downloadable virtual images are licensed typically only for 30 days! BUT, the license requires them to be used in (on) an existing licensed windows! thus they will gripe about activation and windows genuine advantage. They are obviously not or no longer intended to be used like this (for cross platform web testing). So you get 3 days and limited reboots before they lock up. Doh!
- The Network driver I had terrible problems finding (all those bogus download sites, and AMD does not offer it anymore) until I switched in virtual box machine settings to Intel Pro 1000, and downloaded the standard Intel driver. Voila. Networking.
- The password for default IETest user on the test XP image should be changed immediately to ‘IETest’ or something, because the default is something that will lock you out and you need to google to locate. It is something like P2assw0rd.
- If you want to avoid all the activation/wga hassles, for the XP SP3 images anyway, find & download AntiWpa_x64_x86_sp3_apr09 (or later) and run it.

Now I am all set, good article. Just needs updating!

By: Jerry Witt

Jerry Witt — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:48:05 +0000

Yeah, unfortunately Microsoft decided to require registration for these. They effectively removed the way for developers to test their code on MSIE browsers. It really sucks.

Don’t worry, the day is coming when you won’t have to support MSIE any longer.

By: Corbin

Corbin — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 02:50:09 +0000

I know that this article may no longer be monitored, but I thought I would try my luck. I found that the steps here were sooooooo easy to use, so thanx for posting, but as I am trying to setup this on my Mac, the XP images I have tried downloading, all say they need to be registered.

Has anyone else had this problem? Or better yet, know a way around this?

Thanx again for the awesome post.

By: links for 2009-09-02 | Shinji Kuwayama

links for 2009-09-02 | Shinji Kuwayama — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 00:08:09 +0000

[...] Running IE on your Mac in VirtualBox (for free!) revisited – Yet Another Programming Blog Totally replaces VMware on my Macs. (tags: mac ie testing ie6) [...]

By: anna

anna — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:45:26 +0000

Thanks SOOO much for the walkthough to configure networking. The past two times I’ve set this up, I always manage to blunder through it somehow, but couldn’t figure it out after downloading the latest version of VirtualBox (3.0.2). That shared folder thing is kickass!

By: Mike

Mike — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 16:16:51 +0000

Excellent!!!! Just what I needed.

Thank you

By: Kristian J.

Kristian J. — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:24:01 +0000

Thanks! Excellent walkthrough. I had tried this earlier without luck, now I finally got it working.

I didn’t get any BSOD though (XP SP3 w/IE-8, virtualbox 2.2.4).

By: Matt Faulds

Matt Faulds — Thu, 14 May 2009 22:16:31 +0000

Thank you for putting this up – fantastic work! It’s painful that the drivers aren’t included.

By: Miguel Guerra

Miguel Guerra — Mon, 04 May 2009 17:26:42 +0000

Hi,

I got the message again:
http://www.aposta-na-net.com/content/windows_message.png

By: Miguel Guerra

Miguel Guerra — Sat, 02 May 2009 15:42:14 +0000

Hi,

Yesterday, when I wrote my question, I got a message saying that the Windows licence will expire in one hour and I should get a new one. Although today when I opened the vitual machine, it was all ok without any Windows message.
Thank you anyway.