Quick Launch IE icons will not open

I have a brand new Inspiron 6000, XP Pro, Mcafee Suite, a straight factory build.  I took the laptop out of the box, plugged it in, connected my Broad band, powered it up, stepped through the factory set up screens.  I turned on the quick launch took bar and opened IE from the QL bar and the desktop; all worked fine.  The opened quickly and did not hang at all.  I activated Mcafee, updated all the services and all are green and monitoring at default levels.  I then ran the critical updates from the Microsoft website.  Through al of this, I rebooted every time it was recommended.

 

Now when I try to open any IE link out of the Quick Launch toolbar, it hangs.  Task manager shows an IEXPLORER.EXE process at about 7500K.  The processes will stack for as many times as I click the QL icon.  When there's a hung process like this, it sometimes hangs the whole laptop.  Right clicking on the task bar has no response.  I need to use CAD to active it. 

 

Sometimes opening the main IE icon from the desktop allows the QL IE icons to open on top of it.  Sometimes if a QL IE icon is hung, the main IE icon will not open, it just hangs another 7500K process.  Sometimes if a QL IE icon is hung and I open the main IE icon from the desktop, it open and the QL IE will open on top of it.

 

It seems as though the QL IE icons are not able to locate the browser or the connection.  I'm not sure which, but somethng's not right.

 

This is the second Inspiron Dell has sent me.  The same thing happened to the first one.  I have Mcafee and XP Pro on two IBM Thinkpads and a couple of desktops which have been updated the same way and they're not hanging.  Their support in Bangalor and Canada can't fix it and state they have never heard of this condition.  Hmm.

 

I made no updates that were not deemed critical by Microsoft or Mcafee.

 

Has anyone else experienced this?

 

Thanks

Jim