Where are my tabs?

My name is John Hrvatin and I’m the Program Manager for IE setup.

Some customers have reported that after successfully completing IE7 setup, they do not have a tab band.  I’d like to shed some light on this issue and offer a solution.

IE’s tab implementation depends on xmllite.dll which is installed with IE7 but through a separate installer bundled within the IE setup process.  If you extract the contents of the IE7 installation package and run update.exe directly, you will skip this step which results in having no xmllite.dll and thus no tabs.  You can be sure this is the problem if you do not have either of the log files creating during installation of xmllite.dll:

  • %windir%KB914783.log (for Server 2003)
  • %windir%KB915865.log (for XP)

Note: %windir% is your Windows directory and usually located at C:Windows.

The solution is to uninstall and reinstall, making sure to run the full setup program by executing the installation package as downloaded and not by running update.exe directly.  You’ve likely done something incorrect if you don’t see UI like this:

Welcome to Windows Internet Explorer 7 Beta 2

Thanks for trying IE7 and keep sending your feedback!

John Hrvatin