Ok, I’m throwing this one out here for the masses to see what survey says. I’m a Max user turned Maya and have only been working in it for a few months now but a small fundamental feature seems to be missing on my copy for some reason or other.
When creating a poly primitive I can use the create settings tools to select divisions and size, etc.. but once the object is created I don’t get a tab in the attribute editor to modify these settings again. This is true for any of the primitives I make, be they poly or NURBS regardless of type.  It bugged me ever since I started using the PLE before upgrading to the full edition and while it seemed like such a fundamental feature to a 3d application to be left out of such a popular program I learned to deal with it. 
Fast forward a couple months as I was talking to a co-worker about one of his creations and I discover that his apparently works as designed...with a tab to modify the poly once it’s created. I was floored to see it so I had him check mine and he was equally shocked to see that my version did not have this.

We are both using Maya 8.5 - As I said it has been this way since I used the PLE - which was uninstalled before the full version was installed and registered, the objects are not copies or modified in any way as they are created but I do not get this tab in my attribute editor and the help files and tutorials (not surprisingly) have absolutely no mention of this feature. I’ve tried the ‘After Creation Settings: Adjust subdivision’ checkbox in the Poly Tool settings window both checked and unchecked - neither seem to make a difference.
As it is, not knowing this feature even existed allowed me to just create a workflow to compensate but it would so much faster if it worked.

Someone please tell me there is a simple setting somewhere that just needs to be turned on to fix this...Uninstalling and reinstalling is a last resort as I have to get IT involved, etc…

it sounds like you have construction history disabled....it is the scroll icon button on the top menu bar....

Awesome ! Thanks, that was it - is the construction history off by default? The icon wasn’t even visible on my toolbar without expanding it out - took me a few minutes just to find the bloody thing so I’m fairly certain I hadn’t toggled it off to begin with. Never know though. Thanks again, I’m glad it was just a simple setting fix.