IE / Windows Explorer question

I'm running the free version of Zone Alarm on a Win98 machine. I just put Norton 2002 on there and have since cleaned all kinds of trojans and other stuff that wasn't supposed to be on there. Eveything was running well until Saturday night. Zone Alarm was configured to allow me to use Internet Explorer...so all is good, right? Well, now it won't let IE connect and the alarms are showing that Windows Explorer is trying to access the internet. I blocked Windows Explorer, but can't seem to get the firewall to allow me out via IE. I'm curious what could have changed to block IE and, even more disconcerting, allow Window Explorer out. Why would Windows Explorer even need to get out? Any ideas?

something about connectin out was posted here but I don't remeber the name of that thread. But if I remeber that right then IE is trying to connect to some microsoft servers... But I'm not sure. Maybe you should try to find that previous thread.

good luck