These instructions are for running IE7 side-by-side on Windows XP SP2. No warranty! The machine I tried this on became a bit unstable after doing this. I had weird issues with Oulook and very slow page loads in IE7.

  • Download IE7 (file I downloaded was IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe)
  • At the command line, run IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe /x to run only the self-extraction
  • Enter the path you want for the extracted files
  • In the new folder, create an empty text file called iexplore.exe.local
  • Go into the update folder
  • Run idndl.exe
  • Run nlsdl.exe
  • Run xmllitesetup.exe
  • Reboot
  • Go back to the extracted folder and run iexplore.exe. It should work…

Use this at your own peril. I’ve noticed a few problems with IE7 running this way but it is functional.