IE6 / Favorites problems

I'm running Win XP Home ed. with SP2 and I'm having problems with IE6 running when I go to my favorites. Whenever I open my favorites, whether by opening it on the side bar or by using the drop down menu on top, as soon as I try to click on one of the links, or even just hover over one of the links, IE freezes up. I get the hourglass and it runs forever. When I hit CTRL+ALT+DELETE it says IE is "not responding ". I even tried using Windows Explorer and going to the actual folder containg my favorites links. When I double click on one of them, I get the hourglass forever. Also, if I go to the address bar and try to type a URL in (like www.google.com) I get the hourglass.

Once I get to a web page (which is a pain in the a$$) I can surf around fine, no problems. It's just when I try to use my favorites or type in an address at all. The only way I can seem to get to the internet is if I click on a typed out link (like in a email message or something). This is very strange. It just started happening all of a sudden. I didn't install anything new or something like that.

I ran my anti-virus and it found nothing. I ran Spybot, Ad Aware, and CW Shredder. Didn't help. Does anyone have any idea what is going on? This is very frustrating!

Thanks!

 

TheDirtyOne--If no one else has any ideas more directly focussed on your specific problem, you could try to repair IE, since your problems seem not only with your Favorites, but with other IE functions
http://help.att.net/docs/howto/othe...ustomercontent=customer_browser&platform=none
You very likely will need your WinXP CD.

 

No help. Any other ideas?

 

Well, I just tried to clear my History (history of visited internet pages) and got this error message:

RUNDLL

An exception occured while trying to run "C:\WINDOWS\system32\shell32.dll,Control_RunDLL
"C:\WINDOWS\system32\inetcpl.cpl ",Internet Options "

Does this have anything to do with the IE problems I'm having? Did some file get erased/corrupted by accident? Any thoughts?

Will reinstalling IE do any good?

Please help! Thanks.

 

The DirtyOne--That inetcpl.cpl file is not a legitimate MS file. I suspect spyware or a virus
See here
http://computercops.biz/postp341958.html