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Internet Explorer's toolbars and menus

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4 replies

by urhixidur

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A not-nice web site messed up my Internet Explorer settings so that I no longer had any menus or toolbars.

Although the toolbar separator did appear at the top of the window (the mouse changes to up/down arrows when over it), the toolbars/menus
refused to resize.
Since the menus were *also* gone (and did not show in the contextual menu), the usual menu option manipulation was out of the question.
After struggling for a while, I found a solution which I feel must be shared:

1) Close Internet Explorer.
2) Open the registry editor (typically C:\Windows\RegEdit.exe).
3) Open the HKEY_CURRENT_USER key and navigate down to the Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser key.
4) There should be a few binary values under that key, some with GUIDs as names
(long names like "{0E5CBF21-D15F-11D0-8301-00AA005B4383}") and a key named "ITBarLayout".
5) Select the latter value and delete it.
6) Close the registry editor.
7) Launch Internet Explorer.

You should now have your menus and toolbars again, albeit in their default configuration.

4 replies

by urhixidur

Indeed, the IE add/remove entry includes a "repair" option, but this concerns "incorrectly installed components". (We're talking about IE 6, by the way)

Luckily, I had the foresight of saving the bad registry configuration before messing with it, so I was able to put IE back in its "pathological" state, and then try the add/remove repair trick.

The only things it "fixed" were a) it put the IE shortcut back on my desktop and b) grabbed the htm/html association away from Netscape.

To sum up: the add/remove programs control panel's Repair option utterly failed to fix the problem.

(Which begs the question --has this problem happened to others beside me?)

by b_pope

Well I'm only running IE5.5 SP2 & haven't run across a site that did quite that much damage, but time will tell. I'll keep your fix in mind just in case.

Hope you've been visiting MS IE home page they've been very busy of late with their securityfixes for IE, trying to appease the masses.

Have no intention of upgrading to IE6 for awhile anyway, maybe your attack is IE6 security related, I'll hope so anyway just in case I run across a similar site.

Running ZoneAlarm Pro but I doubt that would stop it, I only use it to stop my programs from accessing the internet. Keep my NAV up to date but neither will stop a direct hack on my system if thats what you had.

Did you have any warning?

by urhixidur

(I'm rating this Unacceptable only to keep the question open)

I'm presuming it was hostile, but it could have been sheer clumsiness. It could also have been IE's spontaneous stupidity. I think it was because of one of those sites that pop up numerous kiosk-style windows, particularly when you try to close the previous one --but I can't be sure.

And no, I'm not about to go browsing to deliberately reproduce the problem. ;-)

I keep my Windows Updates and anti-virus up to date. I tried running McAfee FireWall for a while, but it caused more trouble than it prevented.

The funny thing is, after trying the IE self-fix, my DirectX was messed up (mostly the music) and I had to re-install it. Coincidence?

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