Monday, March 2, 2009

How to get the address bar back after SP3 takes it away?

One of the optional toolbars that you can enable on Windows XP (and Vista) is the address bar, which is handy for typing in a URL without first opening up the browser. You can add it to your taskbar by right clicking and selecting Toolbars Address. Or at least, you could - prior to installing the latest service pack. However, if you've installed SP3, you might notice that you no longer have that option when you right click. Apparently the EU deems this to be a violation of their antitrust ruling. Well, I'm not in the EU and I want that option back. Luckily, there's a way to get it, but you'll need to replace the version of the browserui.dll file installed by SP3 with one from SP2. Copy it from an XP system that doesn't have SP3 and put it on the c: drive, then do the following:


1. Restart the SP3 computer in Safe Mode (press F8 at bootup and select Safe Mode with Command Prompt option.
2. At the command prompt, type this: xcopy c:browserui.dll c:WindowsSystem32
3. Reboot the computer.

No comments: