internet explorer “not responding”

I am running Win XP, on DSL, 320 ram, IE6.
I’ve tried this question before, but see a pattern to it now. Whenever I click on a link, and a pop-up ad appears, I freeze up and get a “not responding” error. When I go to task manager, it is the original page that has stopped responding. If I can catch and close the pop-up right away, sometimes I am able to avert the freezing. It happens more frequently when I have more links open, by that I mean maybe 3 or more.
Any help is greatly appreciated!
I have applied all patches for I.E.6
THANKS! Jeff