[Brocker]

Hi Pete,
My wifes computer had a similar problem and would not open IE7. It just suddenly started happening. It took a while but we found a process running in the backgrounsd that turned out to be a trojan. It embedded itself on the system and began to affect anything to do with IE. The way we found it was: Hit ctrl + alt + Delete together and your Task Manager will appear. Hit the processes tab and you will have a whole list of processes. Firstly scroll down and look at any number moving in the CPU column. Most should be 00 if you have no programs running. If you have a process that is changing those numbers, let me know what it is. If there is nothing then try to open IE and see if any numbers change. There was a process on ours that was blocking IE and when we found out what it was we were able to remove it. Give that a go.