Outlook 2003 will not close and hangs IE 6

[Ross]

Everything worked fine with Outlook 2002.

Now with Outlook 2003, if I close the program, any new IE
windows opened will remain blank and eventually come up
as non-responding. When I close IE, it sends a message
regarding the error back to Microsoft.

I have figured out that Outlook 2003 is still running in
the task manager, and if I manually stop it, the IE
window suddenly pops up to the MSN home page, as it is
suppose to.

Also, when I shut down, I have to manually close Outlook
in the task manager in order for a successful shutdown.
If I do not, it pops up with an Outlook non-responding
message and asks if I want to end it, which also works.

This is on a home computer, no exchange server, running
XP Pro.

Any thoughts, it is getting rather annoying..

Ross