I assume you have tried this:- Click Start click All Programs look for and click Internet Explorer. (near the top of the list) If there you can also right click on it and click Pin to Taskbar in the pop up menu If it is not there click the folder on your bottom task bar near the Start button to bring up Windows Explorer click the plus sign beside the C: drive on the left side in the menu dropped down below click the plus sign beside Program Files click on Internet Explorer to highlight it now look on the right side and right click on iexplore and in the pop up menu click to pin to Taskbar. Done.

Check the postings on the link below to see if any of those help. My wife's computer behaves in a similar fashion and I made an odd discovery. She uses IE7 and if we open one instance of IE7 then click links in emails or on web pages then she could open those pages in a new window, not a tab of IE7. Close both windows and try again with no window already open - it failed to open. Strange. One day......... Here is a link that might be useful: Previous thread on this issue

iexplore is what you run Whatever its home page is set to is what you will see when it starts up. So if the home page is set to Google.. that is what you see. If you want to change its home page, type into the address bar www.msn.com or what you want for the home page.. go to the page then typically click the gear on upper right and select internet options then you will see where to set the home page, set it to the page you have open by pressing the 'use current' button.

I dunno,, some thoughts; You can open a command prompt, or maybe type CMD in the run line, and type in at the prompt ; traceRt www.yahoo.com and see if it works to completion,,, to stop it CtrL+C if needed. If it doesnt resolve that url name into a longer named url and IP#'s... and the same down the list of hops,,,, there is a command you might try to flush your dns cache;;; ipconfig /? one of the options should be to Flush DnS cache,,do that like this most likely;; ipconfig /flushdns Then try the 'traceRt www.yahoo.com again and see if it works. If still not working next would be you Might want to look in IE internet Options, under the connections tab. Probably should be set to never dial a connection.. then push the LAN button while there, and uncheck all the boxes there if checked. Another thing you might look at is windows services,,, you might right click the myComputer icon and select Manage. Down near the bottom you should see Services,, expand that out until you see a list of services,,, one of the services is DNS ,,, if it doesnt say Automatic and show as Started,,, double click it,, set it to auto,, and push the start button. I dont know if you understand the HOSTS file,, something may have blocked everything... might look in it -- it has a small explanation on top that maybe you can understand. Sounds like you have a google search bar and it knows its own ip. I hate search bars. heh.