Internet Explorer NOT working in headless mode with Selenium [Using headless_ie_selenium]

Question

I am aware that IE does not support headless. But there's a workaround of using virtual desktops on Windows to get it done. This is what https://github.com/kybu/headless-selenium-for-win is doing, but I seem to be running into an issue here.

My IEDriverServer.exe is added to $PATH$, and headless_ie_selenium.exe is also in the same directory as the IEDriverServer.exe

I'm trying to use it like this:

from selenium import webdriver
from selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keys

browser = webdriver.Ie('C:\IEDriverServer_Win32_3.150.1\headless_ie_selenium.exe')

browser.get('www.someurl.com')

I'm pasting the traceback below

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "C:\Users\hjind\Desktop\pythonRCM\headless_ie.py", line 16, in <module>
    browser = webdriver.Ie('C:\IEDriverServer_Win32_3.150.1\headless_ie_selenium.exe')
  File "C:\Users\hjind\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\site-packages\selenium-3.141.0-py3.9.egg\selenium\webdriver\ie\webdriver.py", line 93, in __init__
    RemoteWebDriver.__init__(
  File "C:\Users\hjind\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\site-packages\selenium-3.141.0-py3.9.egg\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.py", line 157, in __init__
    self.start_session(capabilities, browser_profile)
  File "C:\Users\hjind\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\site-packages\selenium-3.141.0-py3.9.egg\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.py", line 252, in start_session
    response = self.execute(Command.NEW_SESSION, parameters)
  File "C:\Users\hjind\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\site-packages\selenium-3.141.0-py3.9.egg\selenium\webdriver\remote\webdriver.py", line 321, in execute
    self.error_handler.check_response(response)
  File "C:\Users\hjind\AppData\Local\Programs\Python\Python39\lib\site-packages\selenium-3.141.0-py3.9.egg\selenium\webdriver\remote\errorhandler.py", line 242, in check_response
    raise exception_class(message, screen, stacktrace)
selenium.common.exceptions.SessionNotCreatedException: Message: Unexpected error launching Internet Explorer. IELaunchURL() returned HRESULT 80070012 ('There are no more files.') for URL 'http://localhost:57762/'

Answer 1

The only thing that worked for me was to programatically minimise the IE window on launch, and switch to another virtual desktop while the job runs.

Setting introduce_flakiness_by_ignoring_security_domains helped bypass the "Protected Mode" and "Zoom Level" errors.