Internet Explorer problems

Gateway laptop; XP Home SP2; IE6. When I launch IE, it goes straight to the home page just fine, and it loads up just fine, but that's it. If I try to search for something (Yahoo is the home page) or if I type an address in the address bar, IE just locks up. When I eventually get it to close via the Task Manager or by clicking the red X and waiting, I get the old "an error has occured" and do I want to send a report. When I send the report, I get a message that says Internet Explorer was a 'hung application' and then it lists about 5 or 6 reasons why it may have hung, including malware, Yahoo toolbar (which has been removed awhile ago), and some other things. Attached are screen shots from the Event Viewer..... any ideas?

THANKS!

(I have already scanned for and removed malware, I have run Dial-A-Fix, IEFix, LSPFix. I have also installed/uninstalled IE7 and performed a safe reload of Windows; no dice)

 

I'm making a bit of progress.... IE still locks up when anything is typed into the address bar, but if you type something into Yahoo's search bar, that works OK. You just can't type stuff into the IE address bar :confused :banghead

 

UPDATE- If you go to a page and click on a link that will 'take over' the window that is currently open, then everything's cool. But if you click on a link that will open in a new window, that locks up IE....

 

UPDATE part II- I installed Firefox, it works perfectly. I installed an IE based browser -PhaseOut- and it works perfectly. :banghead It would be one thing if no other browsers work, but when a browser based on IE works perfectly, it makes me wonder just WTF is going on, you know? :confused

 

Anyone? Anything?

o yeah, this is a bump :innocent )

 

I had already tried the IE6 re-install, and I had already registered just about every file you could think of.... no action. I even did a safe re-install of WinXP and that didn't work. I ended up backing up some data, formatting, and installing clean. I think some of the malware that I had removed had really dug itself in pretty deep and wasn't completely gone, or maybe there was rootkit.... I don't know, but it's all done now...

Thanks anyway... I'll keep the IE6 re-install steps handy for the next time....

 

mabye your firewall i had a problem like that, i use zonealarm and after a update on zonealarm my internet explorer wouldnt load all the way. i did a system restore and it worked after that.

 

I also have Explorer problems on my new laptop loaded with Vista. So after playing around a bit with it including contacting Microsoft, I loaded Firefox QED
:-D

 

What's Firefox QED?

 

OOOPS sorry...... Firefox.
Q.E.D.

 

Haha... okay. I know what QED stands for... however, you simply mentioned Explorer (instead of IE), so I thought you were referring to the Windows folder browsing shell, and thus that "Firefox QED" was some sort of Mozilla alternative to Windows Explorer that I hadn't heard about (and was mad at myself for not knowing about it, too). I had my hopes up, but Google didn't agree with that synopsis. :-D

Anyway, thanks for clarifying!