Friday, August 29, 2008

TIPS & TRICKS: Missing Address Bar Toolbar in Windows XP SP3

A well documented problem that I just recently came across. One of my users upgraded a personal Windows XP machine to Service Pack 3 and found that he was missing his address bar in the Windows taskbar. SP3 got rid of it to "comply" with anti-trust laws. I'm not sure how much I buy that, but it's plausible.

In any case, there are several third-party add-ins that address this problem (no pun intended). However, I'm documenting a native fix. Credit for this goes to Mark Kaelin over at Tech Republic. Here's the nitty gritty:

1. Find a SP2 copy of the file called browseui.dll located in ~\Windows\System32.
2. Copy it to the same location on the SP3 machine.

Make sure to this in Safe Mode as the System32 folder will not allow changes while. Also, make sure to reboot.

Here's the full directions laid out by Tech Republic:

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/window-on-windows/?p=683

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