There's no magic bullet. You need to either carefully diagnose the problem
step by step, or start afresh.

To diagnose I would start with a thorough RAM and disk drive diagnostic.
Once you are sure the hardware is OK, do a thorough check for spyware,
viruses and trojans, then try clean boot troubleshooting to see if it's some
combination of what's being loaded at startup.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/192926

Searching on 00401f31will give some ideas for additional investigation, but
it sure does sound like an issue with incompatibilities in IE.
--
Jeff Richards
MS MVP (Windows - Shell/User)
"John" wrote in message
...
okay,

well, heres the thing, i do feel like i am grasping at straws, as gary
said
in this thread. but, i dont want to spend all day, or days, on the web,
searching for the solution to my problem. i also do not wish to just
reformat
my drive and run setup afresh. i did a little searching though, getting
links
to microsoft knowledge base articles, though one, that seemed to really
apply
to my situation, didnt resolve anything. i kept getting the same problem.

the problem i am trying to resolve is, when i have restarted my computer
from a previous, STABLE working condition; as the desktop is loading up, i
get an error message come up on the screen, saying:

"Explorer"
This program has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down. If
this problem persists, contact the program vendor.

details:
"EXPLORER caused an invalid page fault in module EXPLORER.EXE at
0167:00401f31
with registers, bytes and stack dumps.
............i can list those extra details, but hopefully, youll be able
to
pinpoint how i can fix this problem.

i came across the knowledgebase article number, 296211 at
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=296211, thinking it applied to my
issue,
and followed its instructions. i went as far as step 7 in the resolution
section and restarted my computer. the same error occurred. there is a
note
mentioned after step 7 that i did not apply yet, cos it doesnt look like
something that applies to my problem.

please advise
thank you