mcdhu
After your machine starts back up having been hibernating did it ask you to log back on or did it take you straight to your desktop / last open program?
I suspect however that a reinstall of IE should be your cure.
It may be worth a call to the techies @ AOL as they are usually quite good at their jobs, even better if you can get to 2nd line support. I would only mention the bit about hibernation after a bit or they will simply refer you back to dell blaming it on Windows.