Windows Vista Unable to use search feature

A friend of mine is running Vista Home Premium. Some how he caused "blank "
to become his default page when he opens IE. I change it to Google Suggest, tried it and it worked fine.

After that I removed Norton security and the other Norton listings I could find from the Add & Remove section, which came with the computer.
I also removed the MSN toolbar and the Google toolbar, also Messenger, Quicktime and another Apple program I can't recall.

Now I went to download AVG, I opened IE which now defaults to Google and typed AVG Antivirus in the SEARCH block in the middle of the page and when I hit enter I get this error message.

Microsoft Windows
Internet Explorer has stopped working.
A problem caused the program to stop working correctly.
Windows will close the program and notify you if a solution is available.

Then I get
-Problem cannot be found and the window closes.

I tried it several times and same result. I can type in the ADDRESS block and
it will open to the correct site.
I tried using MSN.com and the exact same thing happens.

But when I use Yahoo.com I can type in the SEARCH block and get the results I need.

Then when I did D/L AVG using Yahoo, I went to Update it after it D/L and received the same Error message as above.

Some suggestions please.

Paul