The other day I came across a problem with Internet Explorer that completely stumped me. A user had accidentally clicked the "Media" button in IE version 6 and after that point IE would lockup as soon as you opened it. It was clear the media bar was causing the problem. I managed to find one other report of this issue using Google and nothing on Microsoft's Technet. I was able to reproduce the problem on the same PC with different users but not on other similarly configured PCs.

You can get around this problem by installing Service Pack 2 for Windows XP which removes the media bar completely. But if you're not in a position to upgrade to SP2, I found that you can open IE in a way that will allow you to close the media bar so the next time you open IE it will work fine

1. Click Start then Run….
2. In the Open field of the Run dialog, type iexplore -k. This will open Inernet Explorer in "kiosk" mode, and it should open fine with the media bar visable.
3. Close the media bar by clicking the "X" in the top right corner of the bar, then close Internet Explorer by pressing Alt + F4.
4. Now the media bar will not load the next time you open IE so it will work fine.

This isn't so much a solution, as a method to get IE working normally again. Just don't click that "Media" button anymore.