You can capture Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP using the ThinApp Setup Capture wizard.

Capturing Internet Explorer 6 using the Setup Capture wizard is similar to that of capturing other applications. However, there are two key differences. When you use the Setup Capture wizard to capture Internet Explorer 6 on Windows XP, you define an entry point to Internet Explorer. You also use ThinDirect to specify URLs that will be redirected to the virtualized Internet Explorer 6 browser.

See Capturing Applications Using the Setup Capture Wizard.

Prerequisites

  • You must have a clean virtual machine with Windows XP installed. Ensure that Windows XP installation includes all the service packs and Microsoft updates, so that Internet Explorer 6 is captured with the latest security fixes from Microsoft.
  • You must have installed ThinApp 5.2.3 on the same machine.
  • Run the setup capture on a machine running Windows XP with Service Pack 3, and with the .NET framework installed.

Procedure

  1. Create a system image using the Prescan process of the Setup Capture wizard.
  2. In the Install Application dialog box, click Internet Explorer.
  3. Select Include entry point for virtualized Internet Explorer 6 in the virtual package and click OK.
    This option captures both the files that changed during setup capture and other required files and registry settings.
  4. Install any plugins for Internet Explorer that you want to be included in the package.
  5. Rescan the system using the Postscan process of the Setup Capture wizard.
  6. In the Setup Capture – Entry Points dialog box, select the default option, VirtIE6.exe.
  7. Follow the prompts until the Native Browser Redirect dialog box appears.
  8. Create a list of the Web sites and pages that you want to redirect to the virtual Internet Explorer 6 package. Each entry must be on a separate line.
    • You can use wildcards, for example, *.example.com.
    • You can specify a site so that all pages on that site are redirected, for example, www.example.com.
    • You can specify a site name followed by a page name, so that the specific page is redirected, for example, javatester.org/version.html.
  9. (Optional) When you have saved the package, open the ThinDirect.txt file, which contains the entry point to Internet Explorer 6 and the list of redirect addresses, and edit the file.
    This file only exists after you create entries in the Native Browser Redirect dialog box. The redirection list is located in %appdata%\roaming\Vmware\VMware Thinapp\Thindirect.
  10. Follow the prompts to build the project.

    If you want to deploy on latest Windows 10 and 11 platforms, you must perform this step using relevant ThinApp versions on Windows 7 or higher platform.

    The ThinDirect.exe file is embedded in the package, with the plugin ThinDirect.dll and plugin launcher ThinDirectLauncher.exe files.

What to do next

After capture process is complete, you can use the ThinApp ThinDirect plugin on a test machine to redirect Web sites or specific pages to automatically open in a virtual Internet Explorer 6 browser. Web pages that you cannot view in the native version of Internet Explorer can now be viewed in the virtual Internet Explorer 6. A list is maintained that facilitates a redirection process for specified incompatible domains and pages.