I know that Internet Explorer 7 supports Windows XP with SP2 but not with SP1 and the RTM release of Windows XP. However I used Windows XP Home Edition SP1 as a virtual machine in Virtual PC 2007 and I managed to install Utilu IE Collection on that system and surprising it allowed Internet Explorer 7 and 8 to be installed with it because Utilu IE Collection doesn't care about what service pack of Windows you are using but just what operating system you are using and I installed those versions of Internet Explorer with it. I think I had to add or replace files that those versions of Internet Explorer needed, I can't remember the exact files that those programs needed but when I finished doing it and opened Internet Explorer 8 it throws up an error but when I opened Internet Explorer 7 it runned fine though it might have been a bit buggy. Therefore Internet Explorer 7 actually does work on systems before Windows XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003 SP1 but it would only run on the RTM and SP1 releases of Windows XP and the RTM release of Windows Server 2003 due to having functions on dll files that weren't featured on Windows 2000 even with SP4 with Update Rollup 1.

If IE7 works on RTM and SP1 Windows XP with the modifications you mentioned, then it might be entirely possible to get it working under Windows 2000 using a similar method or whatever. We'd just need a copy of Windows XP SP2 with IE7 installed and auto updates disabled (to prevent IE8 and SP3 from auto installing) so we can research the files XP's IE7 uses such as DLL's and registry keys. Yes, I know Vista has IE7 as well, and I have a copy of Vista with IE7 on it, but am afraid Vista's IE7 files would not work since they would point to version 6.0, and probably have some vista exclusive stuff not in XP's version, hence why we would need XP SP2. Resource Hacker by Angus Johnson may be of help too. Rather than go off topic here, I'll create a separate, more in-depth thread revolving around this soon.

asked BWC via PM on MSFN, still waiting for a reply:

This should be the answer for win2k, and the second point should apply to XP pre-SP2:

https://msfn.org/board/topic/171868-int ... /#comments

Well...