Most view history icons....can you go into more detail.

When I click "new tab", instead of seeing a blank page where I enter something in the address bar, I would see 9 icons of my most visited websites. I don't choose what I put there, but I can edit & delete them off the page. On the right side it would show links to less-often visited pages. The convenience was that I could immediately click on any of them frequently during the day without having to open my favorites to open them. I've loaded "Chrome" & that's not it, nor is it IE8. I don't remember how I got it, but it sure was nice! I'm curious if I could do a system restore to Saturday (26th) and get it back.

I don't think a system restore is going to resolve the issue as it deals with system files. It never hurts to try though and you can always UNDO system restore and go back if you are unhappy with the results.

Of note** Another way to view history is to press CONTROL H on the keyboard...

I am not fully understanding, are you asking for the name of other browsers that you may have had such as firefox or opera? You mentioned it was not chrome or Ie8 is why I ask.

are you talking about the drop down menu that shows up under the url address bar that you type your website address into? if so then when you use certain programs which clean out your cache or temp files they also clear your history which would have cleared all those items out.
Have you used something recently to clear out temp files or history?

I would agree with zep try a system restore it may work and if not it is fully reversible.
but if you could give us more info spelling out specifically just what you are talking about it might get us on track with you.

Well, I HAVE had a busy afternoon! I finally discovered that what I had was perhaps an earlier version of Chrome because it combined both IE & Chrome. So I downloaded it again, and though somewhat different, it is at least very close to what I had!!!

I guess I've answered my own question after all! I finally restored my system to Saturday 26th--before I was told to reset IE--and have my previous look that I really like! It's the Google Toolbar. It's like combining IE7 and Google Chrome. Try it, you'll like it!!!

if it is the google toolbar you can add that to any browser so if you do go to Ie8 or firefox simply go get the google toolbar and add it to that browser.

I personally hate add on toolbars but some people find them helpful.

Google Toolbar

you might end up with that happening again if what caused your original problem was a windows update to IE, if you have windows update set to do auto updates you will again get the update since you restored your pc to a previous date, so unless you block that update it will happen again, if it does you can try just adding the google toolbar to it.