HELP I.E. won't stay running

[pozidrive]

My mother inlaw's Gateway laptop running XP sp3 got some virus's and spyware. I have gotten rid of the virus's and spyware for her. The original problem which led me to run some scan's, was the fact that when I.E. 6 was running for a minute or two a windows error message would come up saying the program would be shut down. After getting rid of all of the bad stuff and installing and running Regisrty Defence, I installed I.E. 8 and service pack 3. BTW prior to this I couldn't do windows update. Now after several re-installs of I.E.8 when I open it it comes up then promptly just shuts down again with no error message. Can anyone offer some advice before I wipe this machine out and re-install XP??? Thanks in advance., K

[glc]

Save her data, nuke and pave.