Today, neatly coinciding with the release of the second beta 2 preview I stumbled upon my long discarded Windows XP Home Edition CD. I swear I thought I’d long lost it. Just before rebooting VPC to reinstall, I figured I’d give Activation one more try – as you do – and if that failed try typing in my Home Edition serial in case that worked and saved me the reinstall (it shouldn’t work).

Somewhat unexpectedly my VPC install of Windows, three weeks outside of the activation grace period, successfully ran the activation procedure. I now have a fully functional second install of Windows using the same license key as my host system. All I had to do was… wait.

Some days you just sigh.

As the primary computer user, I do a lot of ‘Administrative’ type tasks: Installing/Removing applications, adjusting web server and database settings, tweaking file system permissions, and so forth. Remedial tasks.

Ordinarily, with a limited account, you would do this by switching user to Administrator and then switching back, but, with a bit of agility, you can also open an Explorer window with Administrator rights from within the current session. This uses the “runas” command line app and Steve told me how to do it a long time ago.

Create a new shortcut with the following as a command line:

%windir%\system32\runas.exe /U:Administrator /savecred /noprofile "c:\program files\Internet Explorer\iexplore.exe \"c:/\""

On first-run it will prompt for the ‘Administrator’ user’s password and remember it for future use (the /savecred switch). It opens an Internet Explorer window, pointed at ‘C:\’. You can use it to manipulate the computer as Administrator without leaving your Restricted User desktop. Any application you launch from within it will also be launched as Administrator.

Thorough background aside, I’ve stumbled upon the knowledge that Internet Explorer 7 breaks this behaviour (I’ve lost the source, sadly). Assuming this is the case and after getting over the amusement of Microsoft making it even harder to run a secure Windows set-up, I need an alternative.

There are a number of standalone file managers in existence but some of them look rather OTT for my purposes. I’m be quite happy with something with similar features to Explorer. So if you, dear reader, know of a reliable and well made Explorer replacement I would love to hear suggestions.

I’ll be sure to follow up with reviews in a few weeks.

Thank you.

Unfortunately, some years ago Microsoft made a terrible engineering decision that means you can’t run two different versions of Internet Explorer alongside each other in the same Windows installation. Thus, the only way to run IE7 in anything close to a standalone mode, is to use Microsoft’s Virtual PC product. This allows you to have a second copy of Windows running in a window on your main system’s desktop. It’s useful and keeps your main system’s files safe while you’re testing something.

Except, there’s a big catch. Some years ago Microsoft made a terrible engineering decision that involves imposing product activation on Windows XP. This means you can only have Windows installed on one computer at a time. Not unreasonable in itself, until you realise that a Virtual PC installation of Windows is apparently identical to “one computer”. Therefore, I can’t install my existing copy of Windows through Virtual PC, because I’m already using it on the computer on which Virtual PC is running. Follow?

So, I can’t activate Windows. It’ll still functional for 30 days though, right? Wrong. I tried installing the IE7 beta. To install, it requires something called a Windows Genuine Advantage validation check. This is a new thing Microsoft have come up with to stop software pirates getting non-critical updates for Windows. Guess the prerequisite? Activation.

I’m lucky enough to have a copy of Virtual PC through Microsoft’s Academic Alliance scheme. That means it’s free. Although, if I want to continue using it after I graduate, it will cost 100 for a full license. Next, add an additional license for Windows XP: Also 100. But, a Virtual PC probably doesn’t quality for an OEM license (they’re for system builders), so instead crank up the Windows license fee to 250 for the full boxed version.

What I’m trying to say is this: It costs 350 to legally test Microsoft’s shit software in a safe testing environment. Here we are, locked in to testing for Microsoft’s terrible but dominant browser and that’s the tax were supposed to pay for it. How did they ever get away with this?

Update: Thank you for all the suggestions regarding hacked standalone versions of Internet Explorer. I’ve actually used these for a long time for testing old versions of IE, the purpose of this entry was to emphasise how ridiculous the only supported mechanism is for testing IE7. I had a genuine desire to do it properly this time.

Anyway, since doing it properly is rarely a sentence associated with any version of Internet Explorer, I’ve instead got it running by following these instructions from Jon Galloway. The only downside is that it requires you to su into an account with Administrative privileges or else IE7 crashes out instantly. I assume that’s a side affect of the hack, not an incredible oversight in the implementation of IE7.

Update 2: Ooooor not. Jon Galloway’s trick, which is known to work with beta 1 and was then modified so as not to fuck up IE6 with beta 2 actually worked for me (wait for it) once. Just once. From then on, IE7b2 crashes out every time you try to start it. Apparently that’s a widely reported change from beta 1, where you could run it standalone like this. I’m going to return to my original “fuck Microsoft” position and sulk.