WinMail Involuntary Shutting Down On Closing IE7

After Upgrading from Vista Home Premium to SP1 every time I close Internet Explorer v.7.0.6001.18000 my Windows Mail v.6.0.6000.16386 (vista_rtm.061101-2205) program also closes involuntarily at the same time... AND Windows Mail won't recognise any Word Documents, telling me *.doc is not associated with any program, despite having Office 2003 installed and otherwise fully functioning on my machine and setting the association, every other MS Office prog works fine, as do pdf files.

Went through All 7 steps Windows had on http://support.microsoft.com/gp/pc_ie_methodseven1000 without success, also even tried rolling back SP1, but now still have same problem am now back on SP1

Anyone any suggestions please how to fix these problems please ?

 

Hi Steve

...thanks for the thought, answer is: No I did not add the Read Mail button. Any ideas on why WinMail won't associate/open WinWord documents, but will open all other MS Office files ?