I've been trying to ignore this problem for a long time but it's now starting to drive me nuts - as everyone else seems to know, the right sidebar does not appear on the homepage in Internet Explorer 8 but it does show up on other pages, as well as in other browsers. I've now tried everything I can think of and have read the other comments (at least those I can find) but nothing works. So, I thought I try something - I've removed everything from both sidebars (left and right) and dicscovered that widgets still show up when I do that. Specifically, the left side bar continues to show "categories" and "archives" (even though the widget panel in WP say that they should not be there) and "recent posts" "Blogroll," and "Meta" show up on the right sidebar (again, when the WP widget panel says there should be nothing there).
In addition, these phantom widgets also show up on ALL pages now. So, just for "fun" I decided to go to the Atahualpa Theme Options page on the WP dashboard and reset settings and also reset ALL theme options. Now the right sidebar disappears but Categories and Archives still show up on the left sidebar (once again, according to the Widgets page on the WP dashboard, there should be nothing there.
Why this is happening, I haven't a clue - has anyone ever figured out what is really wrong? It may be IE 8, it may be WP, or it may be the theme. I suspect that it is not the theme as I also had the same problem with the old Cutline theme too.
Has anyone solved this problem? If so, I'd really like to know. Thanks.