Selenium Grid: Cannot Find Capabilities When Specifying IE Version

🛠️ Problem: Cannot Find Capabilities When Specifying IE Version

You might encounter this frustrating error when trying to run a Selenium Grid session on Internet Explorer (IE) and specifying a particular version (like 11):

org.openqa.selenium.SessionNotCreatedException: Unable to create session from capabilities 
{
  browserName: "internet explorer",
  version: "11"
}
Build info: version: 'X.Y.Z'

This typically happens when the node doesn’t recognize or accept the specific version being passed in the capabilities.

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🧠 Root Cause

Starting from Selenium Grid 4, the use of version as a browser-specific capability is deprecated and should not be manually set unless absolutely needed.

Also:

• If the IE Driver version doesn’t support the specified version
• Or the Grid node doesn’t have the correct IE version installed
• Or the capability keys are outdated or wrongly formatted

Then, Selenium Grid fails to match the request.

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✅ Solution

✔️ 1. Do not specify version unless it’s mandatory

DesiredCapabilities capabilities = new DesiredCapabilities();
capabilities.setBrowserName("internet explorer");

// DON'T use: capabilities.setVersion("11");
WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL("http://localhost:4444/wd/hub"), capabilities);

Let Selenium match the default browser version available on the node.

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✔️ 2. Use se:options if using Selenium Grid 4 with W3C capabilities

Selenium Grid 4 prefers W3C-compliant capabilities. Here’s the correct way to set IE options:

InternetExplorerOptions options = new InternetExplorerOptions();
options.ignoreZoomSettings();
options.requireWindowFocus();

WebDriver driver = new RemoteWebDriver(new URL("http://localhost:4444"), options);

If you’re still using JSON or Node configuration, ensure the maxInstances, browserName, and platform match the hub’s expectations.

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🧪 Bonus: Check Selenium Grid Node Configuration

Make sure your IE node is registered properly with:

{
  "capabilities": [
    {
      "browserName": "internet explorer",
      "platform": "WINDOWS",
      "maxInstances": 1
    }
  ]
}

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🧯 Still Not Working? Debug Checklist

✅ IE is installed and working on the node machine
✅ Node can launch IEDriver without Selenium Grid
✅ Selenium Grid version is 4.x and compatible with IEDriver
✅ IE Enhanced Protected Mode is disabled
✅ Zoom level set to 100%
✅ Run Grid node as Administrator

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🧠 Summary

If you’re seeing “Cannot find capabilities” when using Internet Explorer with Selenium Grid, it’s likely due to outdated or incompatible capability configurations.

🔑 Quick Fix:

• Avoid manually setting the IE version
• Use updated W3C-compliant IE options
• Confirm the node has IE configured properly