This PC had an infection… but after the infection was cleared, Internet Explorer 7 still would not work.

I eventually did an offline malware scan, to be sure of removing any sneaky infections.

Eventually, I could receive emails, and I could browse the internet with Firefox… but still no IE7.

Next, I tried: Start -> control panel -> internet options -> Advanced -> Reset internet explorer settings.

I was surprised that I still couldn’t browse the net, and also couldn’t get the menu bar to appear… I usually right-click on a blank part of another bar, and select “menu bar” on the context menu… but no context menu would appear.

I eventually made it appear by pressing the Alt key (on the keyboard), then view -> toolbars -> menu bar

After that I managed to get to the microsoft website, do an update (particularly the update to ie8 ), then everything fell into place and worked correctly!

I’ve since noticed that pressing Alt will make menu bars appear on many other applications like Microsoft Messenger. very useful keyboard shortcut!