Minimal footprint Windows instance on OS X to run ActiveX

I need to run Windows to be able to use a feature for some remote work. However, I would rather not have a full-blown 20GB (or much more) Windows 8 install for Parallels.

Is there a way to get a barebones Windows virtual environment on a Mac? Something like Windows XP with nLite done for a Mac install? (Using Parallels or something else.)

I cannot run nLite on OS X to begin with. Are there prepared ISO files or something?

Solution 1:

If you only want to run ActiveX and do some minimal browser testing try WINE (winehq.org). It allows you to run some Windows apps 'natively' without running a virtual machine. In particular you can run IE6.

WINE emulates a Win2k / XP environment though so very new programs and programs created by Microsoft will not usually work well.