IE8 developer tools not displaying

Question

First of all, I have read the following:

• IE 8 Developer Tools not working In Windows?
• Internet Explorer 8 Developer Tools not displaying
• Why isn't my IE8 Developer Tools working?

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?

Answer 1

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.

Answer 2

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.

Answer 3

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.