IE8 developer tools not displaying

internet-explorer internet-explorer-8 ie-developer-tools
Portman picture Portman · May 3, 2011 · Viewed 14.7k times · Source

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?

Answer

Javid picture Javid · May 17, 2012

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.

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