Internet explorer error

I have a situation where when it appears my browser has been taken control of(I.E)Whenever I type a url, you can see on the status bar where it says downloading page from site but then it comes up with a message saying internet explorer can not open page. The OS is windows XP and I have run a anti-spyware scan as well as a virus scan and found nothing. I was able to automatically download the latests updates for XP but just can’t browse. I have cleared the history as well as the cache but the problems still persists. How can I work around this?