I am running IE 6.0 in Win XP Pro, and the status bar keeps
disappearing.  I can put it back, but every time I restart IE (or even
open a new window), it's gone.

Is there any way of making it stay?

Dear jeremymiles-ga,

Unfortunately, the best information about this available from
Microsoft suggests that this problem is an IE bug, but only indicates
that they know about it, not that a fix is available or when we might
expect to see one.

"When you open a new instance of Internet Explorer 6 or Internet
Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 (SP1) by using the keyboard shortcut
(CTRL+N) or the New Window command on the File menu, the Status Bar is
not displayed in the new browser window. [...] Microsoft has confirmed
that this is a problem in the Microsoft products that are listed at
the beginning of this article."
  - Status Bar Is Not Displayed When You Open A New Browser Windows
(330216)
    http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;[LN];330216

However, that said, PC Magazine has a tip which should hopefully
resolve this problem:

"Some Windows XP users have noticed that when they have multiple
Internet Explorer windows open, the Status bar (at the bottom of the
IE screen) appears only in the first window opened. To make it appear
in every IE window, follow these steps.

Start with one instance of IE. Select View | Status Bar. Now press
Ctrl while clicking the X in the upper-right-hand corner of the window
to close the application. Next, open My Computer and select View |
Status Bar. Finally, go to Tools | Folder Options and select the View
tab. Click Apply to all folders, confirm the dialog, and then close
Windows Explorer."
  - "Where Did The Status Bar Go?", PC Magazine
    http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,4149,581280,00.asp

The same advice is offered by Tek-Tips.com, with a specific
attribution to your problem:

How can I make the IE Status Bar display all the time? 
http://www.tek-tips.com/gfaqs.cfm/lev2/67/lev3/74/pid/608/fid/2284

And some posters to a thread on anetforums.com further confirm it:

http://www.anetforums.com/posts.aspx?ThreadIndex=3467

Hopefully this will resolve the problem for you,

cerebrate-ga

Search strategy:

Microsoft IE Knowledge Base search: "status bar".
Google Microsoft search: "Internet Explorer status bar" -
://www.google.com/microsoft?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=Internet+Explorer+status+bar

Thanks.  Exactly what I needed, and then some extra.