Two toolbars on one line; lock toolbars forces one down

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Guest

Okay, this is driving me insane.

I've got several toolbars installed, one of them the Google Toolbar.
Typically I position the Google Toolbar to the right of the Address bar on
the same line, and lock the toolbars.

Recently, and quite suddenly, the google toolbar is forced onto its own
line, below the address bar. If I unlock the toolbars, I can reposition it to
where it was. But as soon as I lock the toolbars, it drops down to its own
line again.

Strangely, this does not happen if I try to position it to the LEFT of the
address bar and lock the toolbars, only if it goes to the right.

I've tried deleting the ITBarLayout registry key and letting it get
recreated, but this doesn't fix it. I've also tried uninstalling and
reinstalling the Google toolbar, and the behavior was still there.

Has anyone seen this particular behavior before, and NOT had it fixed by
recreating the ITBarLayout key?

Now, for some more details about what I've tried:

I started doing lots of playing around with the ITBarLayout data in the
registry. I took a dump of this value from another PC where everything was
working fine and imported it onto my problematic machine. This got everything
working again EXCEPT that two of the toolbars names were reversed. Now, this
seems to be a more common problem that has been addressed here and in other
places -- the solution is always to delete the registry key and let it get
recreated, but that just restores my original problem.

In my trials and errors, it looks like byte offsets 17 to 20 of ITBarLayout
indicate which third-party toolbars are displayed. Then there's a bunch of
metadata about the toolbars, in either 4-byte or 8-byte chunks (I can't
tell), followed by the toolbar data itself. The bits corresponding to a given
toolbar seem to be related to where that toolbar's data appears further on in
the ITBarLayout data. Unfortunately, I haven't quite got that connection
mapped out yet. When I tried to reverse two sets of 16 bytes corresponding to
the two toolbars that were reversed, it sort of fixed the problem. I say sort
of, because after doing that, the OTHER toolbar would be forced onto its own
line!

This latter behavior suggests to me that the data for each toolbar (which is
either in 4-bit or 8-bit chunks, I can't tell) has a bit somewhere that
indicates either the size of the toolbar, or that it must be on a line of its
own. I like this hypothesis, except that the 16-byte data chunk corresponding
the google toolbar (in its own key and in ITBarLayout) is the same on the
machine where it positions correctly and the one where it doesn't.

That's when my head started to spin, and I decided to share my problem (and
my tentative findings) here.

Keith
 
Ah, when your head starts spinning you're thinking too much ;o)
Deleting the following registry key may help:

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar\WebBrowser

If you own an HP computer, use MSCONFIG (startup tab) to disable the HP
utility 'autokit.exe'. If you are using XP you may need to download a 'fix'
from HP, available at:

HP and Compaq Desktop PCs - Customized View Settings on the Internet
Explorer Toolbar Revert to Default Settings After Restarting the Computer
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/genericDocument?lc=en&cc=us&docname=c00059793&dlc=en&lang=en


--
__________________________________________
Sandi - Microsoft MVP since 1999
http://www.ie-vista.com
http://inetexplorer.mvps.org

Inetexplorer has changed - for instructions on how to
find old URLs, go here:
http://msmvps.com/spywaresucks/archive/2005/05/14/46971.aspx
 
This produced the same result as when I deleted only the ITBarLayout value:
the toolbar names are fine, but the Google toolbar still insists it can't be
to the right of the address bar.

I don't an HP (it's a Dell laptop), so the other tip doesn't apply to me,
but thanks.

Keith
 
Incidentally, I noticed there's a value called "Theater" at
\\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar that looks
suspiciously similar to the ITBarLayout value. Anybody know what this is all
about?

Keith
 
Keith S. said:
Incidentally, I noticed there's a value called "Theater" at
\\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Toolbar that looks
suspiciously similar to the ITBarLayout value. Anybody know what this is all
about?


See if it is your Fullscreen settings. (E.g. start RegMon filtering on that,
change something in your Fullscreen settings and check if that value
gets changed.)


Good luck

Robert Aldwinckle
---
 
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