IE 'page cannot be displayed' with activeX or any secure pages,

if any page such as hotmail tries to use a secure connection I always get 'page cannot be dispayed' error message, all relevent SSL's are installed and activated and my security settings are on the lowest possible.  This problem seems to be very common as it appears on the microsoft community news goups very often. ( http://support.microsoft.com/newsgroups/default.aspx?ICP=GSS3&NewsGroup=microsoft.public.windows.inetexplorer.ie6.setup&SLCID=US&sd=GN&id=fh;en-us;newsgroups )

The problem is recorded in the knowledge data base for any version of windows lower than XP, which by the way I am using, its only suggestion is to use windows update, which I cannot use as uses activeX so therfore It never connects.

the only other possible sollution I found is rather drastic, but does look like it will work. it involves uninstalling explorer seperatly and then reinstalling it. the only problem is that it wipes all the most recent windows updates which I will not be able to get back if It does not work which I do not want. link bellow describes the operation.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;Q318378