How do I get rid of the "Welcome to IE8" screen every time I start Internet Explorer?

Forever Welcome

Here's the dialog you're seeing each time you start up:

Though I suppose if you're having this problem you're all to well aware of what that thing looks like.

"Ask me later" just postpones the issue. It will, indeed, ask you again later - presumably the next time you start IE8. That's kinda the problem we're tying to solve.

Closing the window using the 'x' in the upper right seems to be about the same as "Ask me later" - this was my approach since I didn't want it to "Ask me later", and I also didn't want to hit "Next". No luck - the dialog came back.

"Next" is your only option to make it go away permanently - you must comply.

Setup Internet Explorer 8

Here's what you'll go through, and my suggested answers to what you'll be asked.

Unless this sounds interesting to you, suggested sites is just a distraction - I turn it off.

Take a close look at what the express option does to for you. If that's what you want then by all means, go ahead and take Express. Me? I have different choices, so I choose custom.

Microsoft naturally wants to promote Bing as their search engine, but if you have other ideas (as I do) choose the option to select another search provider later. (Note that if you fail to then your default provider will stay as is - in all likelihood, Bing.)

I'm not even sure why this is an option. There's nothing wrong with taking the updates to the list of possible search providers, even if you never plan to change providers.

Accelerators are keystrokes that allow you to do something quickly - blog, map, email, whatever - from a web page. I never use 'em, so I choose to turn them off. If you do use them, then either choose the default all-Microsoft set of tools, or select the option to choose differently after setup.

Internet Explorer is notorious for not following proper HTML standards when displaying web pages. IE8 changed the default to be ... closer. Not perfect, but closer. Or at least different. The upshot, though, is that some websites don't display properly with the new more correct display rules. Compatibility view changes the behaviour to be "the old way". One way that compatibility view is controlled is by a list of known websites that IE8 can periodically download and update. Why not? I'd enable this.

And there is it! The Finish button!

Click it, and....

Not Quite Finished

You're not finished.

If you look carefully there's a new tab opened in IE8 since we elected to select our own search provider:

Naturally I click on the one I want (Google), and am then presented with a confirmation of the download required:

Make sure that "Make this my default search provider" is checked. By default it isn't, meaning you'd still be left with Bing for that task.

After doing so, the icon and text in IE8's search box changes as expected:

Now. Finally.

You're done.

You should not see that "Welcome to IE8" dialog again, unless you explicitly reset your IE back to default settings.

But by doing that, well ... you're quite literally asking for it.