IE 7 Freezez on GA-MA69GM-S2H

Hi Folks:

I've just assembled my first Gigabyte MOBO based PC.

I'm running XP Home Edition, Athlon 4800+ X2, 2 Gigs
of DIMM. All of the critical updates were downloaded
and run last weekend.

This machine runs Internet Explorer 6 just fine. I
use Mozilla Firefox, but IE is needed when doing certain
things with Microsoft's site, like updates.

When I start IE 7 it immediately freezez. It's client
area is white, but the frame and the area between the
client area and the title bar just show traces of whatever
window is drug over it.

The Task Manager shows no applications, when attempting
to run IE as the only job on the new PC. IE 7 does show
on the Task Manager's process tab, and I can use End Task
to stop it.

My favorite video game, the ancient Delta Force 2, will
connect to Novalogic's server, and I can move from page to
page, but when I select a battle to join, Delta Force goes
non-responsive. Task Manager's windows shows it, and
indicates that it's non-responsive.

When I went to Gigabytes page and had their auto update
utility take a look at my system, it indicated that I needed
a new driver for the NIC. The driver was downloaded, but
when attempting to run it, I was informed that it was for
Vista. The page clearly marks how to use the facility for
Vista, and I didn't follow those steps. So I should have
received XP dirvers.

IE 7 and Delta Force 2 run fine on my HP Media Center PC,
which is running XP Media Center.

Suggestions?

Thanks
Larry