As much as I would like to take the credit for this post, it was actually the author of that figured it out! If you've been trying desperately to get your hands on IE 7.0 Beta but couldn't because you were on Windows 2003 - here's how you can make the Beta work on Windows 2003 even though it's not supposed to, by design.
The Procedure is pretty simple and direct.
- Get the beta Download Executable.
- Unzip the Executable using WinRAR.
- Navigate to the Update Folder.
- Backup the Update\Update.inf file. Keep it, where you can reach it quickly (e.g. desktop)
- Open the Update.inf and Change The following Lines
[Version]
CatalogFile = %SP_SHORT_TITLE%.cat
LanguageType = %LangTypeValue%
MaxNtBuildToUpdate = 9999
MaxNtMajorVersionToUpdate = 5
MaxNtMinorVersionToUpdate = 1 MaxNtServicePackVersion = 512
MinNtServicePackVersion = 512 NtBuildToUpdate = 2600
NtMajorVersionToUpdate = 5
NtMinorVersionToUpdate = 1
RebootRequired = 1
Signature = "$Windows NT$"
to:
CatalogFile = %SP_SHORT_TITLE%.cat
LanguageType = %LangTypeValue%
MaxNtBuildToUpdate = 9999
MaxNtMajorVersionToUpdate = 5
MaxNtMinorVersionToUpdate = 3 MaxNtServicePackVersion = 512
MinNtServicePackVersion = 0 NtBuildToUpdate = 2600
NtMajorVersionToUpdate = 5
NtMinorVersionToUpdate = 1
RebootRequired = 1
Signature = "$Windows NT$"
6. Start the installation by clicking \update\iesetup.exe.
7. As soon as the install starts and before the first screen is Visible, replace the update.inf from your backup location to update\update.inf and overwrite the update.inf we modified. The modification was just necessary to start the setup in Windows 2003.
8. The installation starts and completes smoothly.