Yes, I too have been having these issues with IE7 and did searches to see what is causing it. One report suggested that there were too many add-ons in IE (Tools/Manage Add-Ons) and I did close a few. It didn't help much.
I am now educating myself to using Firefox (which has been installed for a while but not used much).
It was a case of "better the devil you know" for me but I have to admit Firefox is a big improvement over IE and I am succeedng in pointing my mouse to Firefox now after bootup!
HA