IE8 developer tools not displaying

8
votes

First of all, I have read the following:

When I press F12 or select "Developer Tools" from the Tools menu, nothing happens.

The problem is not that the window is open, but offscreen (it doesn't show up in the taskbar or alt-tab). Also, there is no "IEDevTools" registry key anywhere in the registry (I did a search).

This is on a freshly-installed Windows XP VM used for compatibility testing.

Is there any other reason, besides window position and rogue registry settings, why the developer tools would not display?

6
internet-explorerinternet-explorer-8ie-developer-tools
None that I've heard of. I assume you can see the bottom of the IE window, to confirm that the tools aren't docked there? – EricLaw
@EricLaw Nope, not docked. I used an old Volume License ISO of WinXP (from 2003), upgraded to SP3 and all updates applied. No other software is installed. The .vhd is 7GB. I can upload it somewhere, if you or someone on your team wants to take a look. In the meantime, I've found the IE8 VHDs on MSDN, but they expire in one month! – Portman

6 Answers

17
votes

Immediately after IE8 loses focus to the tools window (right after pressing F12):

  1. Press ALT + Space to bring up the tools window system menu
  2. Choose 'Move...' (preferably by pressing 'M')
  3. Press any of the arrow/directional keys once (such as the down arrow key)
  4. The window will now be 'attached' to the mouse until you click, so you can drag it to the center of the screen and resize it as needed.
4
votes

I had similar problem. Press Crtl+Alt+Del and in manager's Aplication tab left click on the IE Debugger. Move, Minimalize or Maximalize options could help.

3
votes

I got the same problem. It appears that the Tools menu simply isn't working. I worked around by

1) Enabling script debugging in Internet options. Go to Tools> Internet Options> Advanced> Uncheck disable script debugging. 2) then opening a html page with script error, so that the script debugger dialogue pops up, which then allows you to open developer toolbar.

And then I dock this to the main window and proceed with web development with devtoolbar docked.

2
votes

Follow the below steps

  1. After pressing F12:
  2. Press ALT + Space to bring up the tools window system menu
  3. Choose 'Move...' (preferably by pressing 'M')
  4. Press any of the arrow/directional keys once (such as the down arrow key)
  5. The window will now be 'attached' to the mouse until you click, so you can drag it to the center of the screen and resize it as needed.
0
votes

I got same problem. And i got next solution: just deleted hext branch in registry:

HKLM/Software/Policies/Microsoft/InternetExplorer/IEDevTools

I hope it helps.

0
votes

Mani has shared the smart solution, I'd the same issue but none of the solution worked and I tried the way Mani told and my dev tool pop right up. The only thing I'd like to add is, once the dev tool pops up, stop the debugging otherwise it will crash the browser and you have to kill the application.