IE8 “Developer Tools” window is “stuck” and I can't (easily) use it anymore

Question

Somehow, my IE8 "Developer Tools" window has become stuck somehow in a weird position, and I can't figure out what to do in order to get the application to show it like a regular window again.

I have no idea what I did to cause this situation.

Specifically what's going on is that if I click on the IE8 "Developer Tools" entry in the menu, it toggles between being checked and unchecked. When checked, however, there's no visible window for the developer tools. An entry does appear in the task bar, but all I can do is right-click and choose "Maximize". Then, the developer tools show up, but (of course) maximized. I don't want the window to be maximized; I just want it to be a regular window. However, if I click the control on the window title bar, it goes away again.

This situation is persistent across reboots. (I'm running Windows XP in a VirtualBox VM, if that matters, but this has been working without incident for a very long time now so I doubt that's a factor.)

So is there something I can reset, somewhere, so that whatever bogus positioning information the browser thinks it knows about the "Developer Tools" window can go back to normal?

Answer 1

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962963 describes registry edits to reset IE toolbars to defaults, you may want to try that first if you are comfortable editing the registry. (Always back up the registry before making registry edits - even if you know what you are doing, make a backup anyway since some changes take effect right away, and even the most experienced person can make mistakes.)

http://support.microsoft.com/kb/923737 describes how to reset internet explorer settings to defaults - if all else fails or you aren't comfortable editing the registry you can use this method but you may lose other personalized IE settings.