Question: Is there a method to launch an Internet Explorer window from a desktop Icon such that the Status Bar and tool bar are hidden?

When a user clicks on the icon only the windows form (Maximize, Minimize etc) icons should be present. The URL bar, Toolbar, Status bar should not be present.

Answer: 
How about a VB script, shudder...

```
Dim objIE
Set objIE = WScript.CreateObject ("InternetExplorer.Application")
ObjIE.Toolbar = false
objIE.Navigate "about:blank"
objIE.Visible = true

```

Save that as ie.vbs
You can write a simple program to do it, which you could create a shortcut to. 

The basic outline would be:

```
CComPtr<IWebBrowser2> webbrowser;
HRESULT hr = CoCreateInstance(CLSID_InternetExplorer, NULL, CLSCTX_INPROC_SERVER, IID_IWebBrowser2, (void **)&webbrowser);
if (SUCCEEDED(hr)) {
  webbrowser->put_AddressBar(VARIANT_FALSE);
  webbrowser->put_StatusBar(VARIANT_FALSE);
  webbrowser->put_ToolBar(VARIANT_FALSE);
  webbrowser->put_MenuBar(VARIANT_FALSE);
  webbrowser->put_Visible(VARIANT_TRUE);
}

```