Been away from Blender for a while, and trying to relearn it. Lots of great new tutorials already out for it, but (as usual) my view looks different than what Blender Guru Andrew Price is teaching from. (If I knew how to ask him this question, I would have.) He starts right out demonstrating the basic controls that are displayed on the upper left side. Mine looks nothing like that. Was there already a change between 2.8 and 2.81?

The 3rd image is what mine looks like.

Looks like you somehow changed your UI there. Go to Defaults > Load Factory Settings. This could change your selected Addons, but it should bring the UI back to the default state as you see it in your first screencap.

I'm sorry, I meant to type go to File > Defaults > Load factory settings. That should change the UI back to normal.

This is exactly what I got when I opened it up. Tried your suggestion, though. Nothing changed. Guess I could try uninstalling and downloading again...

Uninstalled...reinstalled...and got basically the same thing. No idea what to do with this.

How did you do the install? Did you use the ZIP or did you use the exe installer? If you used exe, then you may have a config folder in your User > AppData > Roaming > Blender Foundation > Blender location. You need to remove that config folder. It's probably holding on to the changed startup settings.

Agree with LuxXeon resetting to default state and if you do decide to do a reinstall deleting that config folder should help in launching Blender into its default state

I installed the first time with the zip, uninstalled and reinstalled with the exe., but I have nothing in the Roaming file for Blender. I'm wondering if this has something to do with my browser. I'm still using Explorer, which is no longer supported. I had to get the new PoserPro11 through a different computer with Chrome. I'll try that next...

It worked! It was the outdated browser that was messing it up. Thank you.

How did the browser affect the way the UI in Blender was presented? I noticed something strange in your last screencap. What is that tab in the UI that says "Hacker"? I've never seen that before in any Blender instance? Also, the tab next to it says "Shader". In the official Blender default UI, that should say "Shading". Very strange. Have you run a malware scan on your system recently? Might be worth a go.

I have scanned, but the problems seem to be with the browser itself (Explorer). When I tried to download the updated Poser, it would only deliver a file document - no exe file, nothing that I could open. My newer laptop has the same browser and did the same thing. I have an older laptop that has Chrome and it worked fine. So after 3 tries on the desktop, I used the old machine to get Blender 2.8 and it worked fine. Transferred it with a flash stick as I did with Poser.

The word "Hacker" really should never appear in your Blender tabs. That's a very troubling sign which points to a corruption on the system somewhere.

Hmm. Thank you. I will definitely look into it.

VolcanicMink posted at 3:04PM Mon, 17 February 2020 - #4380818

Hmm. Thank you. I will definitely look into it.

I hope you could find out what's going on and hopefully, it's not too severe, but it could be a virus or malware infection that has spread to multiple computers on your network. You may be right that it is somehow linked to IE, but again that would indicate an infection of some type. Perhaps tricking your browser into downloading more infected files or corrupting your downloads as they load. There really were several alarming things I noticed in your screencaps that indicate something more than just a corrupted download, and the fact that you continue to experience strange software and download behavior now and then is a red flag.

Sometimes simple malware scans do not turn up results because certain viral infections are specifically programmed to hide from typical malware scanners, especially when the scan itself is originating from the locally infected machine. What version of Windows are you currently running on your systems? Keep in mind Win 7 support has ended, although there are still security releases and such which Microsoft are still releasing for it.

If it's at all possible, and if you continue to see strange or non-typical behavior with your downloads or software installations, I might recommend doing a complete wipe and reinstall of the OS. Just judging by what I saw there, and the description of your problems, it's quite possible you have a virus on one or more of your computers. Good luck, and please keep us updated.

This is just a guess, but since this is the second time I have seen that UI setup in the past month or two, my guess would be it is the custom UI of the person who he downloaded and is loading whatever the free Blend file was (can't remember, but I downloaded it to check out) without unchecking the load UI checkbox.

It's not a virus or anything to do with downloading/installing -- He just keeps overwriting his UI on every load.

I remember that header, because my first thought was why would you name one of your scene tabs 'Hacker'? -- Maybe a rename of the Scripting Tab because he likes to hack the files...

Like I said, this is just a guess, and I could be way off, but it something you guys did not consider in trying to help out VolcanicMink with this issue.

Hope this helps -- If not, please disregard.

DaremoK3 posted at 3:48PM Sat, 22 February 2020 - #4381443

This is just a guess, but since this is the second time I have seen that UI setup in the past month or two, my guess would be it is the custom UI of the person who he downloaded and is loading whatever the free Blend file was (can't remember, but I downloaded it to check out) without unchecking the load UI checkbox.

It's not a virus or anything to do with downloading/installing -- He just keeps overwriting his UI on every load.

I remember that header, because my first thought was why would you name one of your scene tabs 'Hacker'? -- Maybe a rename of the Scripting Tab because he likes to hack the files...

Like I said, this is just a guess, and I could be way off, but it something you guys did not consider in trying to help out VolcanicMink with this issue.

Hope this helps -- If not, please disregard.

Well, that certainly explains it then. Also another case for why Blender should have the Load UI feature turned off by default in the Preferences.

It's always possible that viruses and malware can be hidden, either on purpose or accidentally, in both the Python scripts and .blend scene files themselves. I would recommend always to run a VirusTotal scan on any .blend files you download from sources other than the official Blender website before opening them inside the software. If we don't, then it's only a matter of time before the Blender community fall victim to some nefarious malware code hidden in shared .blend files, especially now that the software is gaining such massive traction outside of the core user base.

In this case, thankfully, it was most likely just a strange UI build that changed his interface. That's good info, DaremoK3. Thanks for letting us know.