IE Maxs out page file memory

I got a call from my dad about his computer suddenly having difficulties. Everytime he double clicks IE on the desktop it doesn't open and just hangs. The only way he can get into it is by opening something like my documents and then going and selecting one of his favorites like weather.com. Either way, when more than one IE window is open, the page file maxs out to 1.5 gig. I was wondering what the problem could be with it. I've had him run a squared, ss&d, adaware, norton's, and have had him try and do a system restore (which failed on 4 different occasions). Do you have any idea what could be causing it to do this? He's using xp home. Everything else on the computer is running perfectly fine, it's only the internet that's acting up and virtually not working or hangs or stops responding.

 

I actually think i discovered something else as well. The reason why page file maxs out and IE hangs is because of a "pop up" effect. when my documents is open and then a favorite is opened a new window isn't opened, it opens on top of it. But when you double click internet explorer, it hangs right away. The reason why this clicked is because when I went to weather.com a popup window popped up and IE hanged and wouldn't respond and page file maxed out again. I also tried it with espn.com and got a pop up and the same thing happened. So I'm thinking it's a pop up effect. This might not make sense, but yet it seems to. Any ideas?

 

First things first. Try posting in the spyware forums:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/forumdisplay.php?f=35

But, before you post there, make sure you read and follow these instructions:

http://forums.majorgeeks.com/showthread.php?t=35407

Malware can bog down machines qutie a bit.