IE 8 Developer Tools not working In Windows?

Question

I am using Internet Explorer 8, not by choice. I need to debug a script in it. However, no matter how many times I click the Developer Tools Icon, under Tools or click F12 it will not show up. Sometimes, I can see that it is minimized in the taskbar but when I actually go to click it. It will not show up...

Does anyone know how to get it to work or what the problem is? I tried updating restarting killing all the processes with no luck.

Answer 1

I had the same problem. I don't know what I did but it just did not showed up. So in order to show it up I've right click in Status Bar on the right window from those 2 Internet Explorer windows and chose Maximize. Then I saw it back :)

Answer 2

The window/toolbar may be off-screen (often way off to the left) or have a zero size. If @EricLaw's suggestion doesn't work I'd recommend uninstalling and then reinstalling (log off or reboot between the uninstall and reinstall to allow any pending deletes to finalize).

I've encountered similar issues with various applications over the years, especially if you've shut down the application while it is minimized (occasionally, even if maximized). Often the developers haven't taken these conditions into account before saving the window/toolbar size and/or position, resulting in a set of invalid coordinates for the next launch. The root cause goes way back to Windows 3.x and the GetWindowPlacement API.

Answer 3

I had the same problem and tried repeated moving; the move cursor always returned to the top left hand of the screen.

The solution for me was to select the item on the taskbar, right click and select maximise and the IE 8 tools window appeared fine.

Answer 4

I had this problem and found a solution:- I use two monitors, and every time I opened IE8 Dev tools, the dev tool window would either be maximised to full screen or minimised to the task bar (irritating to say the least). The other problem was that when maximised, the window was locked into the full screen mode and could not be dragged to a more convenienet size & position. so it was all or nothing !

To get round this I "stumbled upon" a fix that now allows me to open the Dev Tools window as it should be (a seperate window that can still be positioned & sized how I want it)....

Press ctrl+p (PIN) to attach the dev Tools window to the bottom of the actual browser window. At this stage move your browser window into your main monitor if its not already there. Then un-pin it. For me the Dev tools window then started to behave properly and consistently.

Why the hell MS hasnt released an update for this yet is beyond me. Any way hope this helps any of you.

Answer 5

It was also disabled in my registry but the DWORD could be found in HKLM\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\IEDevTools. Set disabled to 0