Microsoft helpfully provide developers with a free, although time limited, VHD for VirtualPC with XP SP2 and IE6 for compatibility testing. This is jolly useful for backward compatibility testing or if you are tracking down an issue which needs a vanilla IE6 which hasnt been modified by the dev environment or other add-ins.
There is one gotcha that you need to be aware of. When they built this VHD, Microsoft obviously tested this on their internal network and then packaged it up. As a result they left in their own company specific proxy settings for the proxy server run by their internal IT Group (ITG). So, if you try and connect to a web page from IE on your own machine outside of Microsoft, you will not connect to a page since the ITGProxy server is not contactable. Ping and other IP releated activities will work fine.
So to fix this issue you need to open IE, and from the TOOLS menu select INTERNET OPTIONS and click the CONNECTIONS tab. At the bottom of the dialog you will see a LAN SETTINGS button, click that and the dialog below will appear. Simply uncheck the ‘Use a proxy server…’ check box and click OK and then OK to dismiss the main dialog.
Simple, but unless you know what to look for you could spend ages trying to resolve this issue. You can download the IE6 VHD here http://download.microsoft.com/download/b/7/2/b72085ae-0f04-4c6f-9182-bf1ee90f5273/IE6_VPC.EXE
