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There have been a few hacks like this one which leverage things like DLL/COM redirection to allow you to run multiple versions of Internet Explorer in the same Windows installation. Someone has also written an installer which allows you to run Internet Explorer 7 and all previous versions side by side in Windows XP.

The problem with that is that Microsoft makes it difficult to install two different versions of IE on the same machine. It's possible, but not exactly easy.

Since I currently need to support IE 6, I haven't bothered trying IE 7. At some point I'm going to have to figure out how to run both IE 6 and IE 7 at the same time, but for now, I'm just not worrying about IE 7.

The other problem with IE 7 that I hope is fixed is that IE 7 Beta 2 broken HTML help. That forced me to uninstall it (on my home machine) since I happen to need to read the documentation for various apps that comes in an HTML help file.

That said,Why do you web developers keep making pages for IE?Even on a slow dialup they could get Opera or Firefox.Why not simply put at the bottom of your page- "I'm truly sorry if our pages loads incorrectly.We have asked time and time again for Microsoft to fix the problems with Internet Explorer only to be ignored.So for your convience we are providing links to FOUR free browsers:Kmeleon,Seamonkey,Firefox,And Opera.ANY of these browsers will not only increase your surfing pleasure by giving better features and better page rendering but will also make your surfing more secure by removing the easy to exploit ActiveX hole.Please enjoy with our compliments."

Not only does that give your visitors an easy way to get a better browser,But by wording it as such shows you care about their surfing experience.And since starting back to school I've found a LOT of folks who haven't even heard of Firefox,much less the others(That's why I keep all four on my flash drive).If more web developers would put links to the better browsers on their site along with a ncely worded reason like I just used(feel free to copy/paste the above) then not only will usage of better browsers like Firefox/Kmeleon/Opera/Seamonkey (All hail Seamonkey!) increase but MS will have to eventually take notice,which means maybe IE8 will actually not suck.Better for everyone,IMO.

I can't affort to dedicate a whole machine to Internet Exploder testing.

I think you mean you cannot afford to dedicate one whole machine per one version of Internet Explorer. One test machine can only include one version of MSIE. So you need 4 machines to test for MSIE 5.0, MSIE 5.5, MSIE 6.0 and now MSIE 7. That is, unless you try all those browsers side by side. Instructions to run multiple different versions of MSIE side by side in MS Windows.

Don't yet know if it's possible to run MSIE 7 as stand-alone version but at least you should be able to install that as the "official" browser and the rest as "local" versions.

And M$ says to dev, please install IE7 Beta and test your pages... except that if I do that, it kills IE6, and I can't check my pages as they'll be seen by 90% of visitors...

http://labs.insert-title.com/labs/article795.aspx
I found this article a while back and now have IE5, 5.5 and 6 on my XP test machine.
It can get a bit screwy with conditional comments, as all the browsers respond to the IE6 conditions, but temporarily renaming CSS files is enough to get around that while testing.

http://labs.insert-title.com/labs/article795.aspx

I'm running IE 4.01, 5, 5.5, and 6 on one XP box as well as Netscape (4, 6 and 7), Opera 7, and Firefox 0.x

Another extension that does this and more is External Application Buttons. It puts buttons in your toolbar to open programs you specify, with things like the current url or the page source as parameters. Most people would use it to open pages in IE, view the source in their favorite editor, or just open their email program.

It's very useful for web developers though, too, because you can use it in conjunction with the Multiple IE Versions hack to test your pages in all browsers you're likely to run into. I test all my pages in IE6, IE5.5., IE5.0, Opera, and NS4. I don't always make 'em work, but sure know when they don't :)

Have a look at Multiple IE's in Windows for running multiple versions of IE side by side in Windows.

This update was big news for the web design community, for other reasons. The developer's edition of IE6 (which was a modified version that contained the pop-up) revealed that Windows was able to run multiple Internet Explorer versions simultaneously by merely adding a blank text file!.

For the longest time, people thought it was impossible to run multiple versions of IE on the same machine to do testing on various browsers. It was a huge pain, and it also meant that developers were forced to use the IE version that came with the OS and not downgrade, while Netscape 4.xx to Mozilla installed fine. But now, it's possible to run IE3, IE4, IE5.01, IE5.5 SP2 and IE6 side-by-side (screenshot).

This update was big news for the web design community, for other reasons. The developer's edition of IE6 (which was a modified version that contained the pop-up) revealed that Windows was able to run multiple Internet Explorer versions simultaneously by merely adding a blank text file!.

For the longest time, people thought it was impossible to run multiple versions of IE on the same machine to do testing on various browsers. It was a huge pain, and it also meant that developers were forced to use the IE version that came with the OS and not downgrade, while Netscape 4.xx to Mozilla installed fine. But now, it's possible to run IE3, IE4, IE5.01, IE5.5 SP2 and IE6 side-by-side (screenshot).