Re: Windows Explorer- No Menu Bar Available Now

From: MB (mb55_at_altair-4.net)
Date: 03/24/04 

Date: Wed, 24 Mar 2004 00:58:43 GMT

MB <mb55@altair-4.net> wrote in news:Xns94B4C9D625F13mb55altair4net@
24.24.2.165:

> I have Windows 2000 Professional on this computer.
>
> Whenever I start a copy of Windows Explorer now, I no longer have any type
of
> menu bar along the top, as I did prior to today. Instead, the only thing
> displayed at the top is the title of the current folder. If I hit the
"F11"
> key, then even that title bar goes away.
>
> In the body of the window, the files and folders in the current directory,
> along with their attributes are displayed; I have the "Detail" view active.
>
> I've tried the "Customize the Current Folder" option, but none of the
> available templates (Standard, Classic, Simple, or Image Preview) bring
back
> the familiar menu bar along the top.
>
> Can anyone tell me how to get the menu bar back?

Well, I'm happy to report that I found the solution; and I'm sharing it, as
described below, so that others that have this problem may benefit. (By the
way, I found that at least one person that had this problem actually gave up
after 4 months, and reinstalled his operating system.)

Finding the solution took me over 2 hours last night (which is a whole lot
better than 2 months, or not finding it at all). And unfortunately, I was
not able to get any assistance from the microsoft.com website on the problem.

Just to clarify, the problem I had, described above, would NOT go away if:

  * I right-clicked on the top title bar of the window (no useful options
came up).

  * I selected the "Customize This Folder..." option, obtained by right-
clicking in the window body; and then choosing any of the available views
(such as "Classic").

  * I typed "F11".

  * I typed "Alt-F" or "Alt-V".

The solution is:

  * Select "Start/ Run"; then type "regedit" (to start the Registry Editor);
then click on "Ok".

  * After the Registry Editor starts, select the following folder:

    HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar

    ... there are are 3 sub-folders under the "Toolbar" folder: "Explorer",
"ShellBrowser", and "WebBrowser". For each of these 3 folders, do the
following: Select the entry "ITBarLayout". Right-click on this entry and
delete it. (It's not enough to do this just for the "Explorer" sub-folder.)

I found this solution using "www.groups.google" (since Google purchased the
now-defunct Deja View news group archive and search service). I found only
ONE news group thread with the correct solution (paraphrased above), out of
the 433 that matched my search. The solution was posted by Doug Knox
(www.dougknox.com), in a post dated 28-Feb-2002.

Thanks very much, Mr. Knox, for the solution.

A question for the Microsoft corporation: I've installed ALL of the upgrades
for my OS, Windows 2000 Professional, but I first started having the problem
described here over 6 months ago. How can this be? Shouldn't there be a
patch implemented? I see that quite a number of people have reported this
problem, and it is extremely annoying.

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