IE6 & Shutdown problems

Having a bit of trouble with IE6 on my machine (specs below).

Since I formatted my hard drive not so long ago, and installed WinXP Pro, I've been having trouble with IE6. Browsing is fine, in fact it works a treat when its open, but I'm having problems opening webpages... here's an example:

Instead of clicking the IE icon and opening up my set home-page, I browse to my favourites and select the site I want to view (at this time there is no other IE page open). Sometimes it opens as normal, but every now and again when I click a link in my favourites (no particular sites, it happens randomly) the system will freeze and no IE page opens. This lasts for about 10-15 seconds, then its like as if the system catches up with itself and IE opens the page, service resumes as normal.

That's not the only problem IE is giving me though. Most of the time (but not every time) when I shutdown, I get an error along the lines of "IE is not responding properly" and I can click "End Now", or wait for about 15 seconds, then the computer shuts down as normal!

Are these problems linked? I've asked about this in several other forums and took the advice people have given me, which includes:

Installing SP1 - Done that, made no difference.
Downloaded the Java Runtime 2 Environment - Someone suggested a java problem - it didn't fix it if it is a java problem.
Repairing IE - Tried this, and it didn't fix either problem.
Downloaded all Critical Updates - done, not fixed.
Do a virus scan - done two and neither came up with any viruses or trojans.

I'm running out of ideas, and if push comes to shove I'll format my drive and put XP back on, but I only want to do that at a last resort.. surely there's a fix to this?

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System Specs:

Win XP Pro
Gigabyte GA-7ZXE Motherboard
AMD Athlon XP 1700+
320MB SDRAM
40Gb Seagate Hard Drive
128Mb nVidia GeForce 4 MX440
Soundblaster Live! 5.1 Sound Card

Have you tried a FULL uninstall and re-install of IE...............I actually only run 5.5 on my XP box....6 seems unstable to me. The MS website has details of how to properly uninstall IE6.

Maybe you should try 5.5 again, but be sure to patch the holes!

Good Luck

Do you have any "add ons" for your browser i.e, a Yahoo tool/menu bar etc?

Yeah I used to have a yahoo menu bar for a while, trouble was nothing worked properly with my browser when I had it. Maybe its not compatable with xp or something?

The only add-on I've got is SurfPal which is a pop-up blocker.. has always been very reliable and a lot of other people I know use this on XP Pro so I doubt it has anything to do with that.

I might try a full uninstall and reinstall of IE, that sounds like the best option right now ;)

Cheers for the helpful replies ;)

A lot of the browser add-ons cause issues, particularly Hotbar......many of my clients have experienced fluky behavior associated with it. Maybe try getting rid of the Yahoo bar and afterwards running Spybot (can be found at download.com- just enter spybot for the search criteria) to clear out any spyware that might be present. A while back my system at home got very bogged down, especially when browsing, and the removal of spyware got it back up to snuff and acting normally.

I'd go with the uninstall IE6 and reinstalling IE5.5

I personally have not found any good reason to run IE6, as it seems to have no new features over IE5.5. While IE6 does seem to have both more stability issues then IE5.5 and does require slightly more resources then IE5.5 did...

Thats my 2cents on the matter.

RRP

I stopped using IE entirely a month ago or so and have since been using the Opera browser. So far more stable, easier to use, and not thoroughly ridden with holes and problems. If I find I don't like this I am heading to Mozilla next, screw IE and it's issues.

My 1/4 cent.