Must reboot after 5 min on IE7 - Page Cannot Be Displayed errors

Okay, I'll try to explain this as best I can as I'm posting this for my husband. He is on a business trip in SE Asia (India, Korea, Taiwan) and while in India he picked up a virus. It's been cleared but he continues to have this problem with IE7...confused
He's able to open it and do a little reading or get his email, but after about 5 minutes he only gets the "Page Cannot Be Displayed" error and is unable to open any new tabs or windows, no links work, etc. (he then has to reboot to get it back). He's cleared files (history, cookies, temp files, etc.) using Internet Options and Explore, disabled add-ons, enabled & disabled pop-ups, etc., all to no avail. He's even tried using it in safe mode but the same problems occur. He was able to download HJT which got rid of hggff.dll (Vundo?). He said he would try to email the hjt.log file tomorrow morning (tonight EST) and I will post it, if this will help to decipher the problem. Meanwhile, if anyone has a suggestion of what else to try I (and he) would greatly appreciate it!
He is using a Dell D610 laptop running XP-Pro on a VPN (required to get his emails from work).