If you are Web designer or Web developer you know that it can be time-consuming and sometime costly to configure different computers with Windows and with different versions of Internet Explorer just to test a Website. I can say that I hear your pain, that is why in this brief article I am going to share a tip that it can be helpful at the time of testing Websites using older versions of Internet Explorer. Well, the solution is using pre-configured virtual machines that Microsoft provides and anyone can download to test either IE7 or IE8; they have the latest Windows updates, they are set up with the specified version of Internet Explorer and they have a clean installation of Windows with modifications for this task.

These images were prepared to work with Microsoft Virtual PC and they may or not work in other virtual environment. Keep in mind that using a different virtual environment you may be asked to enter the product key, and this virtual machines will not pass the validation.

To run these images you will need Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP or Windows Server 2003, and a minimum of 3GB of free space in the hard drive. Visit the Microsoft Download Center for more information and to download the images.