Are you talking about iexplorer.exe (Internet Explorer) or explorer.exe (Explorer) I'm confused. I'm thinking you're going to have to describe the problem a little better...

microburn
He clearly means iexplore.exe (not iexplorer.exe nor explorer.exe) since he mentions web browsers. But it also appears to be explorer.exe since he can't use his control panel.

By the way, if ever in doubt, read the title of the thread, "Internet Explorer has totally crashed on me!"

moonstonediva, have you tried restarting the computer and using run to start iexplore.exe? Maybe your links are screwed up, check what they point at.