Updated: 5/24/13
- Hyper-V for Windows Server 2008 R2 (http://www.microsoft.com/enus/download/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=3512#system-requirements)
- Hyper-V for Windows Server 2012 (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831531.aspx)
- Virtual PC (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd744684(WS.10).aspx)
- VMWare Fusion for Mac (http://www.vmware.com/support/productsupport/fusion/faq/requirements.html)
- VMWare Player for Windows (http://www.vmware.com/pdf/desktop/vmware_player50.pdf)
- VirtualBox (https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/End-user_documentation)
- Parallels (http://www.parallels.com/products/server/mac/system-requirements/)
Most of the provided virtual machines have been archived into a self-extracting RAR archive, with some split into multiple parts of about 1GB a piece. You will need to download all the files associated with your chosen virtual machine before you can begin the extraction process. You DO NOT need to download or install RAR.
Make sure you have plenty of disk space available for the extracted virtual machine files before downloading. Most of the virtual machines should take no more than about 10GBs, with some images consuming significantly less (Windows XP images are less than 2GB).
To download the virtual machine files (for Windows VMs):
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Option 1: It is highly recommended that you use a download manager to download the VM files as they are quite large. For each VM set that contains multiple files, a text file is provided that contains all the needed URLs, and download managers typically work well with lists of URLs. For example, Free Download Manager is a free tool that allows you to import a list of URLs straight from the clipboard.
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Option 2: Download each file individually.
To download the virtual machine files (for Mac VMs):
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Option 1: Use the ‘curl’ command provided with the download to download all needed parts.
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Option 2: Download each file individually.
To download the virtual machine files (for Linux VMs):
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Option 1: Use the ‘wget’ command to download all needed parts. For each VM set that contains multiple files, a text file is provided that contains all the needed URLs, and the ‘wget’ command will work directly with this.
- Example 1 (single-file downloads): wget https://az412801.vo.msecnd.net/.../IE6.WinXP.For.LinuxVirtualBox.sfx
- Example 2 (multi-file downloads): wget –i https://az412801.vo.msecnd.net/.../IE8.Win7.For.LinuxVirtualBox.txt
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Option 2: Download each file individually.
To extract the virtual machine files (for Windows VMs):
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Locate and verify that you have all the needed files for your chosen VM. You should have at least one .EXE and possible a number of additional .RAR files. The .EXE file contains both the self-extraction code plus the first part of the RAR archive itself.
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Execute the .EXE and choose the location where you would like to extract the VM files to.
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Follow the normal import process for your chosen virtualization platform.
To extract the virtual machine files (for Mac and Linux VMs):
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Locate and verify that you have all the needed files for your chosen VM. You should have at least one .SFX and possible a number of additional .RAR files. The .SFX file contains both the selfextraction code plus the first part of the RAR archive itself.
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Give the SFX file execute permission by typing “chmod +x filename.sfx” at the terminal.
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Execute the SFX executable from the terminal with “./filename.sfx” to expand the virtual machine to the current directory.
Notes for all platforms:
- If you do not want to use the self-extractor, you can also extract the virtual machine files using RAR itself (but this does require downloading and installing RAR).
Although you may be able to get away with less, it is recommended that you assign the following RAM to the virtual machines:
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Windows XP images: 256 – 512MB
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Windows Vista images: 512 – 1024MB
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Windows 7 images: 1024 – 2048MB
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Windows 8 images: 1024 – 2048MB
It is also highly recommended that you implement a rollback strategy for any virtual machines that you download. This could be as simple as holding onto the original archive that you downloaded, or you could take advantage of your virtualization platform’s snapshotting capability so that you can start over with a fresh VM at any time and not have to worry about the guest operating system running out of trial time.
IEUser, Passw0rd!
- Using virtualization platform of choice, load the XP VM
- Go to Control Panel | User Accounts
- Select IEUser
- Select "Create a password" link and enter the desired password