I messed up (again). I hit a wrong button and I lost my previous settings. I'm on Window XP, and the problem is with Internet Explorer. I hit a button I shouldn't have, and my settings are totally messed up. What I'm missing is the toolbar at the top that has the headings of File, Edit, View, History, etc. and the icons for Home, Backstep, Exit and all that. How do I restore the settings back to the way it was before? Anything I try makes the matter worse. The only to quit out of a website is Ctrl Alt Del because there's a blank space where everything should be along the top of the screen.
Did you try to right click in the tool bar area? If not do that then you will see a list of menu bar favorites bar command bar status bar and see if any of them are checked or unchecked.
And if they are unchecked then click on it to check it. It should come back to the way you want it to be.
Thanks for the tips. I did the right click and made sure everything was clicked to the on position. It didn't do anything yesterday, but this morning it worked. It still doesn't look like the way I had it previously, but at least it's workable. I have a couple of tabs in the menu bar that weren't there before and I can't close them or get rid of them because when I right click on the tab, the Close Tab, Close This Tab Goup. and Close Other Tabs is greyed out. But at least it doesn't seem to affect the overall operation of IE. I could never work in IT if I had the training. My instant impulse to fix any problems with a computer is to take a hammer to the damn things. Luckily I don't act on my impulses.
You might have inadvertently installed an add-on. You can see which ones you have installed under the tools menu and "manage add-ons".
Just what is in this uncloseable tab?
Mark: I cheked Manage Add-ons, and there's a whole shit load listed that I have no idea what they are. I looked at the File Date and didn't see any date that was recent. As for the tabs, one shows what web site I'm on (not sure now if that was there before) and one tab that says New Tab when I put my mouse over it.
That's how it's supposed to be. It's called Tabbed Browsing. I think you probably just updated to a new version of Internet Explorer, perhaps using windows update. Now instead of opening multiple uses of IE you can just open multiple tabs. If you want to actually open a new tab, left click on that little tab that says new tab, or if you want to open a new link without exiting the page you're on, right click on the link and choose "open link in new tab". It's a lot nicer than having a bunch of IEs taking up room on your taskbar if you're multitasking.
Mine's been like that for at least a year I'm sure. I don't think you have anything to worry about. If you go to your help menu you'll probably see a "what's new in IE 8" option that will explain what's probably different than what you're used to.
It's a relief that what I see is what I'm suppose to have. Thanks Mark for the help and the tip about using new tabs instead of opening IE multiple times.