Installing IE7b3 without WGA activation?

Hey all, first time I've been to these boards. My query may not have been entertaining enough for /g/, according to the rules, so I came here :|

I want to experience this new Microsoft-invented phenomenon of tabs and RSS, yet my copy of Windows (er, strangely) isn't valid for some reason. Or we could say I'm one of those Slashbots who thinks it's a violation of my rights to submit my OS to testing.

So basically - IE7 requires two sets of Windows validation. I solved the download validation issue - you can get Bxeta 3 here: http//download.microsoft.com/... but when you run the installer it also wants to run WGA checking stuff. How do I bypass this?

Just in advance - that weird javascript hack for "WGA" simply bypasses the check on Windowsupdate and isn't relevant to attempts to install either IE7 or WMP11 betas. Also, yeah whatever GetFirefox.com blah blah, I actually want it to test out website designs on a Mac which I primarily run Opera on.

Help would be appreciated! I haven't seen any repackged installers, WGA cracks or methods to skip the activation part of the installer anywhere yet.

I did it before, but can't remember how, or where i found the solution. Basically, you unzip the .exe, and hexedit a value of one of the programs inside it.

Try googling something like "IE7 install wga hex editor" see what you come up with.

just extract the setup and replace .\update\update.exe with a version from a kbxxxxxxx (found in \windows\kbxxxxxxx)

then run this update.exe, NOT the iesetup.exe

You guys are geniuses! Thank you both. I tried what #3 suggested but couldn't find that folder, so I Googled about the hex thing and followed these instructions:

# Extract IE7-WindowsXP-x86-enu.exe with WinRAR (or anything that works) to a temporary directory.
# Open update\iecustom.dll in a hex editor.
# Navigate to hexadecimal offset 0x1034h(4148 decimal) and change 0F 95 to 0F 94.
# Save and execute update.exe.

Worked great, it skips validation and lets you in.

I just realised I did this for IE7b2. You can still change the iecustom.dll as above, but the installer for Beta 3 checks the files and complains that stuff was modified. Oh well, I'll fight that battle another day.

>>1
Why do you want to install that piece of shit?

>>8
Why bother now?  Wait for the final version.

Just say something like "This page works better with a good browser (Gecko, Opera, Safari, KHTML...). If you're using a crappy browser, fuck you."

>>9
Curiosity as well as preparedness for the final version. I do the same with Opera and newer Gecko versions. By virtue of this thread, I now know IE does PNG32 just great!

>>10
Why? IE's pretty capable at most things and there's very few circumstances you could justifably use that message for a reason other than your own laziness\incompetence. That kind of logic is retarded and leads to idiocy like http://explorerdestroyer.com/ .

>>11
Just code for standards and don't care about IE.

IE7 is actually a bit better on supporting code, so just test for 6 and it'll be fine in 7. When the final version of IE7 is out, go download that then. It's difficult to make a page that sucks so hard it doesn't work in IE but does in Firefox and similiar anyway.