If when you press Ctrl+F together, with a view to doing an in-line search in Internet Explorer 8, the Find Bar does not appear, here is what you can try.

It is quite possible that the relevant Active Accessibility Core Component oleacc.dll, situated in C:\Windows\System32 may have got un-registerd or even corrupted.
Open an elevated command prompt as follows: Type cmd in Start Box and in the result which appears, right click on cmd and select Run as Administrator.
Now copy-paste
regsvr32 oleacc.dll
and hit Enter.

This will re-register the dll file. Restart and check.
If it still does not work, I suggest you click Start >Search Menu Bar >cmd >rt click on result > Run As Administrator > Type sfc /scannow > Hit Enter. This will run the System File Checker. KB928228 will show you how to analyze the log file entries that SFC.exe generates in Windows. This will also replace corrupted system files if any. A reboot may be required.
If you have liked this post, you might want to check out some more, on topics like Administrator, Run, Tricks.