28. October 2013

modern.IE saves the day!

Windows XP, never so pleased to see you!

My laptop returned with one bad RAM stick missing. While it was gone, I discovered I prefer Windows 8.1 to its predecessor, especially the return of the start button and the improved start screen that installers cannot automatically colonize. I upgraded my laptop immediately.

Microsoft introduced more changes under the hood, though, and a few programs stopped working. One was Bins which I use to keep my browsers together, but they had a fix available.

A more serious problem was the Juniper Remote Desktop Client. Without this, I was unable to complete my latest contract.

I saw two viable options:

  1. Rollback (noooo! not my new shiny toy!)
  2. VM

Of course, #2 won. But I couldn’t locate my Windows 8 installation disks, and was not about to fork over more cash just to run one program. The solution? modern.IE! I grabbed a copy of XP with IE8, threw it into Hyper-V, and I’m back in business.

While it’s intended to ease the pain of backwards-compatible web development, modern.IE is also a great resource for emergency backwards-compatible Windows development. Somebody reports a Vista bug? Grab a Vista image and test. Need to check something on Windows Server 2012? That’s there as well. The images have a 30 day grace period after which you need to purchase a license, so you cannot use the same OS indefinitely. But still, it’s a very useful addition to my toolkit.

Comments

22. October 2013

Quick Boot Camp Tip

Thought I’d leave this nugget in case it helps somebody. Yesterday my 6-month-old Lenovo ThinkPad W530 died, and my wife needed a new computer anyway, so I picked up a Mac Mini. It’s her computer, but will act as my emergency machine in case something like this happens again. Since I’m primarily a Windows developer, I set up a small partition with Boot Camp.

Here’s what I’ve learned: If you’re attempting to install Windows 8.1 on a Mac Mini using Boot Camp, and you choose to download the drivers to a USB flash drive and then install from an external DVD drive, you must remove the flash drive before rebooting into the Windows installer. Otherwise you’ll just see a blank screen and nothing will happen and you’ll be scared and afraid for your brand new purchase.

Also, the “alt” key is your friend if you don’t have an Apple keyboard — hold it down on boot to see the boot options.

Comments