Wow, this thread is long-in-the-tooth! More than four years, and still the "get FireFox". Pretty soon it will be "get LazerFox".
It's true that IE, and a lot of Windows OS settings for that matter, are not set up very secure by default.
You can leave everything as is, open all those emails, install those shady programs and click on everything on every shady site you visit. Then blame IE when things are kaput.
Besides having virus/spyware tools, and definitely a firewall, you should have a good idea what's on your own machine. What programs/services are set to run on startup? Check your HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Curr entVersion\Run key and know what those programs are. Run services.msc and see what's started automatically. Most malware doesn't use the Startup folder anymore, but check it anyway. Use programs like Tlist and Kill to view and stop running processes. When your box is hijacked the task manager (ctrl-alt-delete) sometimes isn't good enough to find and kill bogus processes. It might be a good idea to save a list of running processes when your computer is acting right. Then when you have problems, you can kill those funky-sounding procs one at a time and maybe narrow down the offender. I hate when programs you install like Norton, Office, Ulead, etc... run a bunch of crap on startup. You have to check things out before and after you install anything, and maybe cleanup a little of the garbage. And have a reliable backup system. I use Ghost to just completely restore the partition to what I KNOW is a clean state. I have Win2K. I don't know if the XP restore points are reliable, but I wouldn't rely on them alone.
Well I rambled enough (the letters are black - background's white )
I have to stop now; my browser is crashing.

Hi g'evening all, i would like if some one can advise me on what to do as ever so often when i open a web page a lil window is popping up saying Error Report & please send report to microsoft and wheather i click send or dont send the window is closing !!!!!!!!!!!

Howdy!

Not to worry, that's just microsoft, making the world a better place for you and me.

The link takes you to a page that describes the error reporting service MS has put in many parts of the Windows O/S in order to try to figure out what caused whatever to crash.

It is just a window begging for you to send them some information related to what crashed and what the state of the program/system as it crashed. Send it or don't send it, and the window goes away until next time.

But users of other browsers such as Firefox needn't feel left out, in XP and later there is the windows error reporting tool which does virtually the same thing as the IE reporting tool each time Windows headbuts

And let me guess - you can't turn it off?

Its a pernicious virus called "Windows". Delete the entire file folder.

thank you guys had a problem with my pc, when i was listening to real radio this message was coming out Internet Explorer has encountered a problem and it shuts down , since reading your replyes i have done this
click on start -run-regedit-ok..u get the Registry Editor
click on the +sign next to each of the keys
+Hkey_local_machine
+software
+microsoft
+windows
+current version
+explorer
then RIGHT click on" Browser helper object "& click DELETE// click on YES when prompted..
exit out of registry editor..
try using IE & it should work fine

thanks deepak lahiri

Hmmmm...sounds like a good swashbucklin', devil-may-care method for fixing things. I like the way you think, Deep....

However, I did the same thing and now none of my helper objects seem to work. I also accidentally deleted my database, any idea how I can get it back before my boss gets back from lunch? Oh, we don't believe in backups here either...they take up too much disk space and are inconvenient to maintain.

*tongue firmly in cheek*

Are there any potential problems associated with disenabling these "third party extensions?"