I’ve found that if I press the F11 key this clears them temporarily but I then lose the ability to see the status bar at the bottom of the screen. Can you help?

Unwanted toolbars like these are adept at working their way into web browsers, apparently uninvited. In fact, in many cases they arrive as part of other software that you have voluntarily installed.

A program’s installation wizard may have included a discreet tick box that signalled your agreement to install this, that or the other browser toolbar. By failing to click to remove the tick (understandable, as you may not even have noticed it), the program goes ahead and adds a toolbar.

Though some can be helpful – such as the Google Toolbar – others are just plain annoying and serve mainly to benefit the developer (through data collection, advertising medical carts and other bits or both). Pressing F11 switches the browser into fullscreen mode: this effectively hides the toolbars (and everything else, as you’ve discovered), but doesn’t disable or remove them.

Fortunately, in most cases disabling and/or removing browser toolbars is straightforward. You didn’t tell us anything about your computer, so we don’t know which web browser or operating system you’re using. However, we’ll guess that it will be a Windows PC and that you’re using Internet Explorer.

Assuming this is the case, then to disable (and thus hide) a toolbar, open the Tools menu (or click the Tools button), point to Toolbars and click to remove the tick from the offender. Repeat for each toolbar you’d like to hide.

Versions of Internet Explorer 6 onwards (so any edition released in the past decade) can also run add-ons, some of which may also affect the browser in unwanted or otherwise annoying ways.

To view and manage installed add-ons, click the Tools menu and choose Manage Add-ons (in versions earlier than Internet Explorer 8 you will also need to click Enable or Disable Add-ons from the submenu).

The precise appearance of and options available in the Manage Add-ons window that appears varies between browser versions, but usually you can click on an entry for more information and click the Disable (or Enable) button as appropriate.

I hope that helps. Let me know if you want instructions for a different browser.

Such problems are seldom due to a genuine incompatibility between a certain version of a web browser and a website. Much more likely is that the website is performing a check and has failed to recognise the new version of the browser you’re using.

If this check can be bypassed, the site usually works perfectly well. To this end, some web browsers offer the ability to change something known as the ‘user agent string’ – this is a little bit of code that identifies the web browser to visited websites. It’s presented to any website you visit, whether it’s http://www.redenvelope.com/personalized-gifts-rprsl or British Gas.

Unfortunately, Internet Explorer does not – at least not by default. There are ways to change IE’s user agent string by editing the Windows Registry, but I wouldn’t recommend messing with this unless you knew what you were doing.

My main recommendation would be to contact the owner of the website. As more and more people start using a new browser, this problem will need to be corrected and the more pressure clients put on them, the quicker they will get their web team to resolve the issue. In the meantime, there are a number of alternative browser, like Firefox or Chrome that can tide you over.

By default, each Internet browser will try and make itself your default browser. It’s just their way of trying to make sure you use them; but this can be quite annoying, just like someone who keeps ringing your doorbell and then running off. Here’s what you can do to make the reminders go away.

Start IE and refuse the offer for it to become your default browser. Click on the Tools button and choose Internet Options. Click on the Programs tab and then click on the check box labelled: “Tell me if Internet Explorer is not the default browser” so that the tick disappears. Click OK to save your options.

The options here allows you to edit a web page and fix whatever problem caused the initial error message. This is fine if it’s a web site you built, but if it’s not your site it can be quite annoying. Especially if you have no idea what Visual Studio is (I take it from the rest of your email you’re in a healthcare career, not in technology). So, if the message appears, decline the offer to debug the page. And here are some instructions to stop it from appearing again.

Start Internet Explorer, left-click on Tools then Internet Options. Click on the Advanced tab and scroll down to the Browsing section. Left-click in the boxes labelled Disable script debugging (Internet Explorer) and Disable script debugging (Other) so that a tick appears in each. Click on OK.

You may need to restart any open browser windows, and after you restart you should never see this dialog box again.

What you are seeing is a generic warning about ActiveX Controls, rather than a specific criticism of the Adobe Flash Player. These warnings are designed to make you stop and think about what you are installing and, if necessary, look for more information.

ActiveX Controls add additional features to Internet Explorer. They can be quite powerful in what they can access on the computer, which is why you should be careful which ones you install.

The Adobe Flash Player ActiveX Control is safe to install and without it sites like BBC iPlyer and YouTube won’t work, as wouldn’t simple Flash effects like adding led light bulbs to the sides of your website. Just follow the instructions and let it install itself.

The one thing you’ll notice once you have this particular Control installed is that you will get a richer Web experience, so go ahead and give it a try.

Yes, they are saved in a special folder in your User folder. Left-click on the Start button and then on Documents. Left-click on your login name in the address bar and then double-click on the Favourites folder to see all of your bookmarks.

If you have since installed a new disk, and are using the old disk as second hard disk (slave drive), then you should be able to copy them across by simply dragging and dropping them back into the Favourite folder on the new disk.

Even if your hard disk hasn’t blown up, it always makes sense to keep a backup of things you might find important, and Favourites are no exception. It might be something as trivial as a link to PandaPang or something more important like helpful information on mesothelioma, a backup is always essential.

I got this message from a friend who spends quite a bit of time online messing around reading about his favourite sport, shooting. He was going on about receiving information about Nightforce rifle scopes and how he couldn’t just click the link in the email and how “his computer wasn’t working properly”. Well, the problem he described is caused by not having an association set up which can interpret the link. This can sometimes happen when you try a different browser then uninstall it. These leaves your operating system without an association for web pages because the old associations now don’t point anywhere.

You can solve this problem by associating your links back with Internet Explorer. Here’s how you do this:

• Click Start, the Control Panel
• Double-click on Internet Options
• Click on the Programs Tab
• If there is a button marked “Make Default” click this
• Otherwise click in the box labeled “Internet Explorer should check to see if it is the default”
• Click OK
• Start Internet Explorer and choose Yes when asked if it should be the default browser.

That should solve the problem for you, but feel free to give me a shout if you still have problems.