IE8 Hangs During Initialization

Hello. I am having exactly the same problem, IE8 hangs when it starts. Gets as far as start downloading from home page. It starts the loading link and then stops with about 2.2 MB of memory in use. The only way to recover is to end the process or shut down the PC. I have worked the process above to the point of starting XP PRO SP3 in the 'clean boot' state. When I got to the point of restarting to change a service. (step 2.8) I got a message that said 'An Access Denied error was returned while attempting to change a service. You may need to log on using an Administrator account to make the specified changes.' Investigation revealed that step 2.7, disable all Microsoft Services, did not take (ran msconfig again and saw that they had reverted back to being checked). I disabled them again and got the same message again, then rebooted the system. The 'clean boot' state was not implemented although I did get the System Configuration Utility warning message. How do I modify my administrative permissions so that I can implement this change to starting in a 'clean boot' state?