2nd PC could not browse to certain sites under ICS

Hi all,
I have 2 problems to report here and hope you’ll be able to assist me:
1) Whenever I browsed the Windowsbbs site, IE will close after a minute or two with the message: "Microsoft Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and needs to close." I do not experience this while browsing other sites. My IE version is 6.0.2800.1106 with a 128bit cipher strength. This bug came in after updating critical files from Microsoft’s site. I have to prepare this report in Microsoft Words, browse to the BBS page, quickly cut & paste before IE closes in again.
2) My 2nd PC (Win98SE) which is peer to peer networked to share the internet connection (ICS) with the 1st PC (WinXP) could not browse certain sites that the 1st PC could. Despite using the site’s IP address, the page would not load at all and later came up with a message : "Page could not be foundâ€. I have tried editing the "hosts" file in the 2nd PC by entering the site’s IP address in numbers and words but the defect persisted. Could this be a setting problem? I could "ping" between the 1st & 2nd PC and vice-versa. I have tried flushing the DNS by invoking: c:>ipconfig /displaydns and then c:>ipconfig /flushdns , delete all cookies and temp. internet files without success. I have Norton antivirus program without the firewall enabled.
Please guide me further. Thank you.