Internet Explorer crashes on new Vaios

I have a six-month-old Vaio desktop with Windows Media Center 2005, as well as a five-month-old Vaio laptop, which I upgraded from Windows XP Home to Windows XP Pro with SP2.

Both machines have fast CPUs and plenty of RAM (1 GB on desktop, 512 MB on notebook).

I love both systems except for one thing: Internet Explorer crashes a LOT. This was not an issue on previous “no-name” home desktop with XP Pro, nor on work PC (Gateway) with XP Pro/SP2 and only 256 MB of RAM.

My guess is that one of Sony’s numerous pre-installed programs or utilities is conflicting with IE. Anyone have any experience with this? Thanks in advance.