IE11 F12 developer tools greyed out

internet-explorer internet-explorer-11 ie11-developer-tools
noonand picture noonand · Mar 14, 2014 · Viewed 39.1k times · Source

Wondering if anyone's seen the below behaviour with the IE11 F12 developer and if there's a fix?

OS is Windows Server 2008 SP1 with all updates applied.

Screenshot attached

Shows grey area where IE11 dev tools should be

Answer

Steve Henty picture Steve Henty · Feb 14, 2015

I recently discovered this same problem... F12 Developer Tools grayed out.

It turns out I was trying to open the dev tools from a blank tab. IE11 apparently doesn't like that. If I navigate to a page with content (not about:blank), then the dev tools show up again, like normal.

I feel a little sheepish, but only a little. I'm use to Chrome's dev tools, and they open up fine on a blank (about:blank) page.

UPDATE

Okay, about:blank works fine in IE11. It's when I first open IE without navigating anywhere at all (just the original New Tab) that dev tools is disabled.

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