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Internet Explorer 7 Beta Preview

Friday, February 3rd, 2006 at 8:41 AM Category: Business, Meryl's Notes Blog, Tech 7 comments

The IE 7 Beta Preview has been released and people are talking about it in many places. Some people may have downloaded it and installed it, forgetting that newer versions of IE always take over past versions. Thanks to several excellent resources, it’s possible to uninstall IE 7 and run it separately without losing IE 6.

To remove IE 7 (Thanks, Techenclave):

1. Click Start > Control Panel > Add or Remove Programs.

2. Check “Show updates” radio box.

3. Scroll down the list to find Internet Explorer 7 and click Uninstall.

4. Restart and IE 6 is back where it was before IE 7 swallowed it up.

Run IE 6 AND IE 7 (Thanks, Jon Galloway):

1. Download IE 7 beta preview.

2. Download WinRAR.

3. Double-click on the WinRAR executable to install it and click Install.

4. Click OK from the WinRAR Setup window.

5. Click Run WinRAR.

6. Click File > Open Archive.

7. Click on the down arrow next to Files of type and select All Files.

8. Browse to wherever you saved the IE 7 executable, select it, and click Open.

9. Open the files to a folder of your choice.

10. Close WinRAR (uninstall it, if you wish).

11. Open the folder where the IE 7 files are located. Find and delete SHLWAPI.DLL.

12. In Windows Explorer while you’re in the IE 7 folder, right-click and select New > Text Document.

13. Rename the next document to IEXPLORE.exe.local. Do not add .txt on the end of the file name. That’s the full file name.

OK, I had to nix the last line because a security update broke this. Whenever I tried to open a link in IE6, it opened in Firefox. I have to use IE 6 for work stuff. Thanks to Jon for letting me know. Jon posted the steps here.

When I run it, the IE7.bat doesn’t stay open in the background. So I ran IE 7 normally and then clicked on IE7.bat again after I closed IE 7. IE6 works again.

Tags: browsers, internet explorer

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7 comments

Posted by Jon Galloway on February 3rd, 2006, 10:06 AM
Those instructions are outdated and can cause problems with the latest releases of IE6 and IE7. IE7 Beta 2 Preview writes a registry entry that conflicts with IE6 and browsing behavior in general.

I wrote a launch script that takes care of the registry entries, as well as the file rename and delete. It’s available here: http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2005/12/28/434132.aspx
Posted by Hetal Velani on February 9th, 2006, 12:57 AM
This is really useful as i also needed to try IE7 but at the same time wanted to keep IE6 running for work related projects.
Posted by Narendran on February 9th, 2006, 6:08 AM
Hello
I have installed IE7 beta while i got a new system. At that time the username created by the computer company was some long name and number thing. After getting the system i installed IE7 with that user and then i made my user name and deleted the old username .. right now i cant remove IE7 beta from the add and remove programs window. Can u help me in this matter ?
regards

Narendran J S
http://narendranj.blogspot.com
http://bookmarks-share.blogspot.com
Posted by Michael Hessling on February 9th, 2006, 7:19 AM
Between your instructions (up to #10) and then Jon’s instructions (starting at #4), IE6 and 7 both run. (Not flawlessly, in IE7′s case, but enough to view pages.)

Thanks for posting them!
Posted by Fred on February 9th, 2006, 11:24 AM
you guys rock! Thanks for the info
Posted by Rahil on June 30th, 2006, 8:01 PM
Hi,

I have IE 7 Beta 2. I can’t seem to uninstall it. I tried checking the ‘Show updates’, but still no joy. I wish to install IE 7 beta 3. Can you help me please?
Posted by Meryl on July 28th, 2006, 6:09 PM
Here is more info on how to uninstall it if the above doesn’t work for you:
http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2006/06/29/650033.aspx