A user mentioned a problem to me where IE was not starting on an XP PC. On checking the app appeared to start but nothing was displayed and the process had to be killed. On trying starting Internet Explorer with the -extoff switch still had no effect. However looking at the process table in task manager – I noticed that there was an msiexec process kicked off each time that IE was started.
On a hunch I took a look in control panel to see if there were any apps or toolbars relating to IE there and lo I found two relating to SweetIM – did some checking on the web and with the user and found that this wasn’t need and could be removed.
After removal IE could start and I was able to clear history and check for other addins but since then the application has run without issue.