Missing hyper-links

I have a Dell 1.9ghz 256 ram and 40 gig hard drive running XP.I had the machine set to automatically recieve updates.Around the time I recieved an update from microsoft I lost hyperlinks in outlook express and internet explorer.The links are still blue and underlined,but when you click on them nothing happens.If there is a link to someones e-mail,it works, but the links to websites don’t work when selected. Tried moving back to an earlier restore point, but it didn’t cure the problem. Have beenthrough the security settings in internet explorer but couldn’t fix.