How can I test if IE6,7,8 are successfully using Flash without installing them?

Question

I made a HTML5 video which plays well in all modern browsers. However, it needs to successfully "fall back to Flash" in IE6,7,8.

When I look at my site in IETester with its emulation of IE6, IE7, and IE8, these browsers play they flash version of the video as they should.

In order to see if Flash is working in IETester at all, I go to http://helpx.adobe.com/flash-player.html which quickly displays that Flash is working, but then crashes, so I'm not really sure if IETester is showing me what users of these actual browsers see who have Flash installed.

How can I be certain that IE6, IE7, and IE8 can successfully run the Flash version of my video without installing these browsers and flash on other machines?

Answer 1

I use VMWare with a fresh install of WinXP Pro (WinXP Pro comes with IE6) I created "snapshots" after I installed each Windows Service Pack and Browser upgrade. I could also do this with the OS if I wanted to upgrade to Win7 and get IE9 on my VM, but I haven't needed it yet.

I have

WinXP Pro IE6
WinXP Pro SP2
WinXP Pro SP2 IE7
WinXP Pro SP3 IE7
WinXP Pro SP3 IE8

I can start at any snapshot to create pretty much anything else I need as well. For instance WinXP Pro SP3 IE6?, I could start with WinXP Pro IE6...