Any need to run the new Internet Explorer 7 Beta to test a web app or other project? Problem is that IE 7 doesn’t officially support a standalone mode anymore and installing it removes IE 6.x - so you may be giving up a working IE browser for a buggy beta one. If you’re familiar with Microsoft’s Beta software then you may also know that they have a tendency to have poor uninstall routines that end up forcing you to manually remove “leftovers” before you can install the official release of IE 7.

There is an easy way to run the IE 7 browser in standalone mode, thanks to Jon Galloway. Below in Step #3, I’ve added a VBS script that hides the DOS window that needs to be kept open in his version. Here are the steps:

1. Download the IE 7 Beta installer, “IE7B2P-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe” is the current version. Extract the files in the installer by opening a command line to the folder it’s saved in and type “IE7BETA2-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe -e” to extract it to a temporary folder (something like C:\abcdefghijklmnop\), or use WinRAR if you have it installed already. Before closing the popup notification message, copy all the extracted files from the temporary folder to a permanent folder, I’ll use C:\IE7\ in the example. You can change the folder name, but edit the attached scripts if you’re going to change their filenames.
2. Create a file named IE7.bat in the folder C:\IE7\ and paste in Jeff Galloway’s IE7 script:
   

   @ECHO OFF
   TITLE IE7 Launcher 1.4

   ECHO IE7 STANDALONE LAUNCHER 1.4
   ECHO Updated for IE7 Beta 2 Preview
   ECHO.
   ECHO Do not close this window or it will not clean up after itself properly.
   ECHO You can pass a URL into this batch file, like this:
   ECHO ie7.bat www.microsoft.com
   ECHO.
   ECHO More info here: http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2005/12/28/434132.aspx
   ECHO.
   ECHO When you close IE7, this will remove the registry key and shut itself down.
   ECHO.
   ECHO Setting up IE7 for standalone mode…
   PUSHD %~dp0

   ECHO Removing IE7 registry key and set the version vector to “7.0000″.
   > %TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg ECHO REGEDIT4
   >>%TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg ECHO.
   >>%TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg ECHO [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\CLSID\{C90250F3-4D7D-4991-9B69-A5C5BC1C2AE6}]
   >>%TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg ECHO [-HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Interface\{000214E5-0000-0000-C000-000000000046}]
   >>%TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg ECHO [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Version Vector]
   >>%TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg ECHO “IE”=”7.0000″
   >>%TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg ECHO.
   :: Merge the REG file to delete the IE7 standalone entry
   REGEDIT /S %TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg

   REN SHLWAPI.DLL SHLWAPI.DLL.BAK
   TYPE NUL > IEXPLORE.exe.local
   ECHO Running IE7…
   iexplore.exe “%1″

   :: Merge the REG file to delete the IE7 standalone entry
   REGEDIT /S %TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg
   :: Delete the temporary REG file
   DEL %TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg

   ECHO Removing IE7 standalone files…
   REN SHLWAPI.DLL.BAK SHLWAPI.DLL
   DEL IEXPLORE.exe.local

   :: Set the old version vector “6.0000″.
   > %TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg ECHO REGEDIT4
   >>%TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg ECHO.
   >>%TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg ECHO [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Version Vector]
   >>%TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg ECHO “IE”=”6.0000″
   >>%TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg ECHO.
   REGEDIT /S %TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg
   DEL %TEMP%.\IE7Fix.reg

   POPD
   ECHO Complete, closing…

3. Create a file named IE7.vbs in the folder C:\IE7\ and add the following VBS script:
   

   Set oShell = CreateObject(”WScript.Shell”)
   oShell.Run “ie7.bat”, 0, True

4. That’s it. To run IE 7, just create a shortcut to the IE7.vbs file and don’t worry about cleanup or keeping any DOS windows open.

Article tagged: Internet+Explorer+7, IE7, beta, beta2, standalone, fix, test, script, hack,

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