Jim, > What would you suggest?
There is a completely free and extremely easy solution for you to have a testbed XP system that is always going to be clean: 1) Download Virtual PC 2007 http://tinyurl.com/2jr7a7 aka http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/virtualpc/default.mspx 2) Download the "Internet Explorer Application Compatibility VPC Image" http://tinyurl.com/yz6qxt aka http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=21eabb90-958f-4b64-b5f1-73d0a413c8ef&DisplayLang=en Virtual PC is software that will create a "computer within a computer." You can run Windows XP and even some Linux distributions within it. Not only that, but you can set an option such that changes to the system are not recorded to disk. You never have to re-load an image. Just quit Virtual PC and the next time you run it, the system is in factory condition again. The IEACVPC Image is a *pre-activated* copy of Windows along with Internet Explorer. You can choose between Windows XP SP2 with IE6/IE7/IE8 or Windows Vista with IE7/IE8. The software is intended to make it easier for people to test out web pages under the various configurations, but it works extremely well for testing out other software. Using these images enables you to run various configurations of Windows instantly, without the time-consuming process of backing up and restoring drives. Just choose which OS you want from a menu. If your machine is powerful enough, you can even run multiple virtual computers at once. Again, there is no cost for either of them. You don't say whether you are using an Intel-based Mac, but if you are, you have the option of using either VMWare Fusion or Parallels as a "clean" testbed, and you can specify that these virtual machines do not have access to the Internet. I have not tried to run Virtual PC within VMWare yet, but that would be a delightfully geeky/fun project to try some day. This software is so useful, I highly recommend it for anyone who builds software for distribution on Windows. _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [email protected] Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution
