I work with some software that only runs on IE8 and IE9. Very frustrating but c'est la vie. When I wanted to move from IE8 to IE9 to see what happens on different versions I'd need to install the new version and if I wanted to go back to IE8 then I'd need to roll back the Windows Update (because for some reason that's how Internet Explorer is installed).
Well the other day I cleaned out my Downloads folder and with it my IE9 installer. No problem. Microsoft must make this available still, right?
Wrong. The download page for IE9 says it only works for
Windows Internet Explorer 9 for IT Professionals and Developers--Windows Vista 64-bit Edition and Windows Server 2008 64-bit Edition
Windows Internet Explorer 9 for IT Professionals and Developers--Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008
You'll notice neither one of those is Windows 7 or Windows 8. And when you download and try to give it a go anyway the installer knows this, too.
And that link it suggests basically says "nonono you don't want IE9 silly boy, you want IE 11. Here are two IE11 installer options"
OK. Ridiculous but again, c'est la vie.
Then I find that Microsoft has a better option for working with these old versions of IE. A nice packaged VM. This is definnitely the way to go. They support Virtual Box, Virtual PC, Hyper-V, and VMWare on a slew of host versions of Windows. Nice.Getting going on Virtual PC was super easy. The catch is that they expire after 30-90 days. So basically you can't use them long term but if they are just for testing, whatever.
But, It turns out Virtual PC is not what the cool kids are using anymore so I downloaded and installed Virtual Box. Also, very easy. Just download the VM you want from Microsoft then import it into Virtual Box as an appliance.
It said importing would take 23 minutes but it really too only a few seconds. Thank you SSD.
So now I have IE11 on my computer (my regular computer) and IE8, IE9 and IE10 running in VMs through Virtual Box.
Side note:
With Virtual PC there was the snag that they say the default username/password is
IEUser
Passw0rd!
but I needed to use local\IEUSER to stop it from trying to log onto my domain.