Here is a tip that may help some of you out there that are working with Windows and Internet Explorer, which can get kind of quirky at times. I don’t know about any of you, but I have found it rather annoying that I can’t download Internet Explorer 6 from Microsoft’s website, other than the online installer that downloads as part of the install. Well, here is a way to use that installer to download the source files so you can perform an off-line installation, which has been useful for me sometimes.

First, let’s create a directory to work in, for this example it will be C:\ie6. Now, take the Internet Explorer setup file (ie6setup.exe) and copy it into that folder. Once it’s there, you can run this command, either by clicking Start and then Run and pasting it in, or by creating a new shortcut. It needs to be exactly what I have displayed here:

"C:\\ie6\\ie6setup.exe" /c:"ie6wzd.exe /d /s:""#E"

Looks rather cryptic, doesn’t it? Well, it is, but it works. What you will get will be the standard Internet Explorer setup prompt, however, once you agree to the terms, the next screen will look different. This screen will allow you to choose what version of Windows to download Internet Explorer for, like 98, 2000, XP, etc. You also have to tell it where to download the files to, and that would be the C:\ie6 directory we created earlier. Here is a screen shot of what this looks like:

From here, click next and watch the files commence to downloading. Once the files are downloaded, you should be able to copy the entire ie6 directory to the target computer and then run ie6setup.exe and have it install from the local files, rather than Internet download. Enjoy!