All the IE's packaged as VirtualBox machines with an easy install script: https://github.com/xdissent/ievms
In Ask HN: What's the best tool for browser testing on a mac?xdissent
ievms
Shell2011–2017
xdissent / ievms
ievms
Automated installation of the Microsoft IE App Compat virtual machines
43Distinct people
46Mentions
1Explicit recommenders
9.8KGitHub stars
What to know before exploring
What it is
Automated installation of the Microsoft IE App Compat virtual machines
GitHub
Where it is used
No documented product use was verified in the last source check.
What people are saying
It's not a lot of work to get a Windows/IE virtual environment up and running on a Mac, I use Virtualbox daily in combination with https://github.com/xdissent/ievms This shell…
omgmog used a recommendation phrase. One indexed comment matches. This is a phrase match, not a verdict.
No classified warning is attached to this page. Read the discussions before treating silence as approval.
Also in these discussions
No other repository is repeatedly linked in the same discussions.
This week on Hacker News
Nov 8–Nov 15 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/15/2026, 3:38:16 PM UTC.
No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.
Mentions over time
HN mentions by year46 dated mentions
Observed mentions: 2011-08-22 19:25:09 UTC to 2017-01-21 20:40:38 UTC.
Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.
View mention counts and date ranges
| Period | Start (UTC) | End (exclusive, UTC) | Mentions | Submissions | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | 2011-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 2 | 5 |
| 2012 | 2012-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 14 | 3 | 11 |
| 2013 | 2013-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 11 | 2 | 9 |
| 2014 | 2014-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 7 | 0 | 7 |
| 2015 | 2015-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 4 | 0 | 4 |
| 2016 | 2016-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2 | 0 | 2 |
| 2017 | 2017-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 2018-01-01 00:00:00 UTC | 1 | 0 | 1 |
From the project README
An excerpt from the repository, fetched Nov 13, 2026.
Read the project’s introduction
Overview
Microsoft provides virtual machine disk images to facilitate website testing
in multiple versions of IE, regardless of the host operating system.
With a single command, you can have IE6, IE7, IE8,
IE9, IE10, IE11 and MSEdge running in separate virtual machines.
Quickstart
Just paste this into a terminal:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | bash
Requirements
VirtualBox > 5.0 (http://virtualbox.org), select 'command line utilities' during installation
Curl (Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install curl)
Linux Only: unar (Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install unar)
Patience
NOTE Use ievms version 0.2.1 for VirtualBox < 5.0.
Installation
1.) Install VirtualBox and check the Requirements
2.) Download and unpack ievms:
To install IE versions 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and EDGE use:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | bash
To install specific IE versions (IE7, IE9 and EDGE only for example) use:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | env IEVMS_VERSIONS="7 9 EDGE" bash
3.) Launch Virtual Box.
4.) Choose ievms image from Virtual Box.
The OVA images are massive and can take hours or tens of minutes to
download, depending on the speed of your internet connection. You might want
to start the install and then go catch a movie, or maybe dinner, or both.
Recovering from a failed installation
Each version is installed into ~/.ievms/ (or INSTALL_PATH). If the installation fails
for any reason (corrupted download, for instance), delete the appropriate ZIP/ova file
and rerun the install.
If nothing else, you can delete ~/.ievms (or INSTALL_PATH) and rerun the install.
Specifying the install path
To specify where the VMs are installed, use the INSTALL_PATH variable:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | env INSTALL_PATH="/Path/to/.ievms" bash
Passing additional options to curl
The curl command is passed any options present in the CURL_OPTS
environment variable. For example, you can set a download speed limit:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | env CURL_OPTS="--limit-rate 50k" bash
Disk requirements
A full ievms install will require approximately 69G:
Servo:.ievms xdissent$ du -ch *
11G IE10 - Win7-disk1.vmdk
22M IE10-Windows6.1-x86-en-us.exe
11G IE11 - Win7-disk1.vmdk
28M IE11-Windows6.1-x86-en-us.exe
1.5G IE6 - WinXP-disk1.vmdk
724M IE6 - WinXP.ova
717M IE6_WinXP.zip
1.6G IE7 - WinXP-disk1.vmdk
15M IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe
1.6G IE8 - WinXP-disk1.vmdk
16M IE8-WindowsXP-x86-ENU.exe
11G IE9 - Win7-disk1.vmdk
4.7G IE9 - Win7.ova
4.7G IE9_Win7.zip
10G MSEdge - Win10-disk1.vmdk
5.1G MSEdge - Win10.ova
5.0G MSEdge_Win10.zip
3.4M ievms-control-0.3.0.iso
4.6M lsar
4.5M unar
4.1M unar1.5.zip
69G total
You may remove all files except *.vmdk after installation and they will be
re-downloaded if ievms is run again in the future:
$ find ~/.ievms -type f ! -name "*.vmdk" -exec rm {} \;
If all installation related files are removed, around 47G is required:
Servo:.ievms xdissent$ du -ch *
11G IE10 - Win7-disk1.vmdk
11G IE11 - Win7-disk1.vmdk
1.5G IE6 - WinXP-disk1.vmdk
1.6G IE7 - WinXP-disk1.vmdk
1.6G IE8 - WinXP-disk1.vmdk
11G IE9 - Win7-disk1.vmdk
10G MSEdge - Win10-disk1.vmdk
47G total
Bandwidth requirements
A full installation will download roughly 12.5G of data.
NOTE: Reusing the XP VM for IE7 and IE8 (the default) saves an incredible
amount of space and bandwidth. If it is disabled (REUSE_XP=no) the disk space
required climbs to 95G (49G if cleaned post-install) and around 22G will be
downloaded. Reusing the Win7 VM on the other hand (also the default), saves
tons of bandwidth but pretty much breaks even on disk space. Disable it with
REUSE_WIN7=no.
Features
Clean Snapshot
A snapshot is automatically taken upon install, allowing rollback to the
pristine virtual environment configuration. Anything can go wrong in
Windows and rather than having to worry about maintaining a stable VM,
you can simply revert to the clean snapshot to reset your VM to the
initial state.
Guest Control
VirtualBox guest additions are installed after each virtual machine is created
(and before the clean snapshot) and the appropriate steps are taken to enable
guest control from the host machine.
Resuming Downloads
If one of the comically large files fails to download, the curl
command used will automatically attempt to resume where it left off.
Unfortunately, the modern.IE download servers do not support resume.
Reusing XP VMs
IE7 and IE8 ship from MS on Vista and Win7 respectively. Both of these
images are far larger than the IE6 XP image, which also technically supports
IE7 and IE8. To save bandwidth, space and time, ievms will reuse
(duplicate) the IE6 XP VM image for both. Virtualbox guest control is used
to run the appropriate IE installer within the VM. The clean snapshot
includes the updated browser version.
NOTE: If you'd like to disable XP VM reuse for IE7 and IE8, set the
environment variable REUSE_XP to anything other than yes:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | env REUSE_XP="no" bash
Reusing Win7 VMs
Currently there exists a bug in
VirtualBox (or possibly elsewhere) that disables guest control after a Windows 8
virtual machine's state is saved. To better support guest control and to
eliminate yet another image download, ievms will re-use the IE9 Win7 image for
IE10 and IE11 by default. In addition, the Win7 VMs are the only ones which can
be successfully "rearmed" to extend the activation period.
NOTE: If you'd like to disable Win7 VM reuse for IE10, set the environment
variable REUSE_WIN7 to anything other than yes:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/xdissent/ievms/master/ievms.sh | REUSE_WIN7="no" bash
NOTE: It is currently impossible to install IE11 without reusing the
Win7 virtual machine.
Control
Read the full README on GitHubWhat Hacker News says
14 sourcesHow I got 300+ HN points posting a 5yo+ link that made the front page for 20hrs
I thought I'd share my story about the link I posted the other day, Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IE (microsoft.com). I never realized this link would be worth 300+ Hacker News points, but I thought the story around it might be interesting enough to share.
I was working on a client site that required the use of IE 7 to test a particular bug. I had installed VirtualBox in the past, but after doing a fresh install of OS X I was trying to avoid that whole process. In fact I was even considering installing the old, old version of IE 5.5 that was actually released for the Mac platform back in the stone age. So I went to Google and searched for "ie os x" and found this:
http://samvermette.com/256. This was the first I heard of Microsoft releasing free VMs so I thought, "Hey cool, I'll share this on Twitter". I posted the l
Read the rest
ink, @stroughtonsmith retweeted it and before I knew it I had retweets and stars coming in at a consistent clip.
Through the retweets came a single mention pointing me over to https://github.com/xdissent/ievms which was quite useful for my case. Knowing the original article was published in June of 2011 I knew this wasn't new information, but I figured I'd post the link to HN anyway. I figured somebody had to have posted it in the past, so I might get a duplicate link error or something.
Well that didn't happen and immediately it started to get points and comments, very helpful comments at that. I chimed in a few times in the beginning and got bonus points for a couple of my early comments.
So a few things I learned from this: HN doesn't necessarily reward new, cutting edge information, chiming in early to a trending topic is worth a fair number of comment points, and you learn a lot more about a topic than you do posting a link to Twitter. Finally I found HN points aren't worth anything toward my profile. I got absolutely zero visitors to my website and I doubt anybody even clicked over to my profile to see who I am.
The windows versions you mention are not right.
It's WindowsXP-IE6, WindowsVista-IE7, Windows7-IE8/9
https://github.com/xdissent/ievms/blob/master/ievms.sh#L150
In Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IExdissent made a great command line installer on github for virtualbox and these virtual machines; you can get them running with one command. I've used the script for the last year or so when I've had to set up a new box for testing and I've really enjoyed it.
https://github.com/xdissent/ievms
In Free VMs of Windows to test older versions of IEThis script will setup vm's for ie 6-9 under virtualbox. https://github.com/xdissent/ievms
Very handy.
In Ask HN: What do you guys use to check browser compatibilityI'm running my local development environment off of my MacBook Pro.
It consists of:
* Built in Apache/PHP, both configured how I like it
* MySQL installed via the DMG download from mysql.com
* Postgres installed via DMG download
* Redis, MongoDB, Node installed via Homebrew
* Git installed via Homebrew
* Ruby 1.8.7, 1.9.2, 1.9.3 installed and managed by RVM
* Rails and other gems installed and managed by RubyGems
* IE7, IE8, IE9 virtual machines installed via https://github.com/xdissent/ievms/
In Ask HN: What is a good local Web app development environment(node/mongo/redis)?ievms dude, ievms.
https://github.com/xdissent/ievms
In Supporting IE Is Too Much WorkMicrosoft's virtual machine images work great in VirtualBox. It's a bit of a PITA setting them up manually, but it's very easy with the installer shell script at https://github.com/xdissent/ievms#readme
In Supporting IE Is Too Much WorkIt's not a lot of work to get a Windows/IE virtual environment up and running on a Mac, I use Virtualbox daily in combination with https://github.com/xdissent/ievms
This shell script automatically downloads Windows virtual machine images from Microsoft, so that testing can be done in IE6/7/8/9. You don't even need to use separate machines, if you get a Windows 7 virtual machine set up you can use IE Tester to run IE5.5-9 http://www.my-debugbar.com/wiki/IETester/HomePage
In Supporting IE Is Too Much WorkThe only VM that requires any driver config is IE6, and these scripts handle that: https://github.com/xdissent/ievms
You don't need to activate Windows, you can (legally, supported by Microsoft) extend the grace period to 180 days, and you can even automate that. http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/vista-hands-on-9-use-vista-fo...
It's been that way for 5+ years.
In Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IEievms[1] aims to make testing IE on a non-Windows box less complicated (it depends on VirtualBox).
[1] https://github.com/xdissent/ievms
In Hey Paydirt: Your Site Works Just Fine In IEAutomated installation of the Microsoft IE App Compat virtual machines
2 points · Open discussionFor those (like me) who still need to support IE6 for a while again, don't miss ievms (automated installation of IE in VirtualBox):
https://github.com/xdissent/ievms
(it recently added support for IE6)
In IE6 Usage Falls to Under 1% in U.S.