Microsoft has specifically designed IE to be more friendly to web site creators than to surfers. Use Firefox.

Similarly MS has designed Windows to be more friendly to software writers, particularly MS itself, than to software users. For this reason MS has quite consciously left out proper backup software within Windows. Millions of hours of time have been lost because MS doesn't include software capable of backing up and restoring Windows. EVERYONE I know that uses Windows has had it their operating system go wonky on them at least once in the last ten years.

Ever since I got proper backup software about four years ago, my life with Windows has been easier. I use Acronis True Image Home Edition, but Norton Ghost works just as well. There may be freeware that will work on your system. In general, it's an incredibly good idea to backup your entire system partition. Regularly. Particularly before trying huge "update" files like SP3 for Windows XP. (And yes, I too discovered SP3 was not compatible with one of my computers until new video drivers came out a month or so later.)

Sometimes uninstall works cleanly. Sometimes it doesn't. So long as your hardware is working, restoring your system partition from backup ALWAYS works. I feel pretty good knowing that no update or malicious code can take my computer down for more than a few hours. My only real software worry these days is newly deployed key-loggers.