The "Renderer" tab should be at the top of each window pane (Perspective, Front, Top, etc). There should be six items there - "View", "Shading", "Lighting" "Show" "Renderer" and "Panels"
If you don't see these headings, it means your panel-specific menus are likely to be turned off. To turn them on again, you can press the spacebar to bring up the "Hotbox". In the center row on the right (to the right of the box labeled "Maya", is a box labeled "Hotbox Controls".
(This is the default position of the "Hotbox Controls" box; depending on how your Hotbox is configured, it may be in a different spot).
Click on this, and look at the pop-up menu that appears. At the bottom, there should be a checkbox labeled "Window Options".
Click on the "Window Options", and a roll-out menu will have a checkbox for "Show Pane Menubars". If this is checked, you should see the six pane menu items at the top.
As for the View Cube not being in the Preferences window - I do not have a clue as to why this might be except that maybe you're looking in the wrong place ... see attached image #1
