Issue - The menu options are not displayed in Internet Explorer 8.
Reason - This is not an issue and is by design. To view the menu options, hold the Alt key.
Resolution - To enable the menu options to be displayed always, you should enable to “AlwaysShowMenus” key to 1. Follow the steps:
1. Press Win + R keys.
2. Enter regedit and press Enter.
3. Navigate to the following registry key:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESoftwareMicrosoftInternet ExplorerMain
To enable, create a dword value named AlwaysShowMenus and set it to 1, and to auto-hide, set the dword value to 0.
If you don’t want to play with the registry, download and run the corresponding .reg fix.
If you do this on XP service pack 3 you will break some other things. After enabling this feature on a fresh install of windows, IE8 had trouble running some flash web content (it also didn’t do what it was supposed to). After removing it, flash content works perfectly again.