I could not open internet explorer (6.0) at all. My friend tried to help me over the phone and told me to end iexplorer (not explorer) in the close program menu. Then I ran an update on my anti-virus program. This did the trick at least temporarily and I was able to open explorer. And like a half a dozen explorer windows opened. My friend said something about how those were windows that had opened but just hadn't been visible. But the frustration returned later in the evening and explorer wouldn't open. This morning my roomate looked at it, fixed it by doing something different from last night (I wasn't really paying attention) and the same thing happened with the multiple windows coming up. Then he ended probably a half a dozen iexplorers in the close program window. Now I'm afraid to turn my computer off b/c i don't want this to happen again. Any ideas on what caused the problem, and how to fix it if it happens again?

Try repairing IE (end tasks of all running programs using Ctrl+Alt+Del except explorer and systray and dump tifs first). Start>Settings>Control Panel>Add/Remove Programs>highlight M$IE in the list and click remove, choose the repair option, click okay or apply, reboot. If your pc is riddled with spyware/malware, this may not succeed (probably won't). You might want to download, install, UPDATE and run Spybot S&D's check for problems (with as little running in the background as possible). It might be best to run CWShredder before SSD, because improper removal of CoolWebSearch variants may complicate matters. Here's a two page SSD tutorial: http://tomcoyote.org/SPYBOT/index1.php

did you ever get this working? I'm having the same problem. I can't get IE to EVER start up!!!