It is very common especially in the banking, insurance and government sectors to find numerous legacy applications still needing older Internet Explorer versions. Typical example is certain modules of core banking software.

This is even more painful when some of the organizations try to rollout out “BYOD” programs and there are MacOS users in the mix. That’s when VMware Fusion and ThinApp comes to your rescue.

I ll tell you exactly how.

Things you need to get started aka “Pre-requisites”

For the end user:

VMware Fusion
Windows 7

For the administrator:

VMware Fusion or VMware Workstation or VMware vSphere
VMware ThinApp
Windows XP 32-bit SP3
Windows 7
Internet Explorer installers.
- IE 7
- IE 8

The following are the high-level steps:

Virtualize IE 6
Virtualize IE 7
Virtualize IE 8
Install IE packages on Windows 7
Run the applications in Unity mode and create MacOS Doc shortcuts

Virtualize IE 6

I don’t want to re-invent the wheel. Refer to the below KB article.

https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1026565

I have created a video below.

Virtualize IE 7

Refer to the KB article below.

https://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1026674

Files required can be downloaded from below link.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3id9xqq8uyzaz9e/AAAuKOldIWVJVkZmRRffPMRoa?dl=0

I have created a video below.

Virtualize IE 8

Refer to the wonderful blogpost below.

https://blogs.vmware.com/thinapp/2015/01/package-internet-explorer-8.html

Files required can be downloaded from the below link.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/yhdadx6q5613psd/AAA8TdfgE-hzCid7zY2FHJtha?dl=0

I have created a video below.

Install MSI packages on a Windows 7 machine

In the previous videos, you created MSI packages which now needs to be installed on a Win 7 x64 machine.

Creating MacOS shortcuts

Creating MacOS shortcuts in the dock is simple. The following is what you need to do:

Power On Win 7 x64 VMs that is already installed with IE 6,7,8.
Run the programs in “Unity” mode instead of “Full screen” or “Window Mode” like shown below.