Unable to open site, icons weird!

[consumertalks]

Dell 2350 P4 2.2 w/XP

2 problems that I think may be related:

1) Different deal sites, sometimes this one, will load, then I get an error window:

IE cannot open the site "w.wherever.com"

Operation aborted.

??

2) My Viewsonic Wireless icon for the mouse (eyes) have become a blue box in the system tray. When I float over it it says "battery normal" as always, but the icon's gone about half the time. Same thing with my real.com (blue bubble) at the top of IE. I don't use the real.com link, but the icon is just a black hole in the shape of the icon. ??

I have AdAware and Spybot, which has removed h_key's in the past. I ran a Windows Update, both problems still exist!!

[consumertalks]

BUMP!

This is annoying.. if I close the error window, and refresh it a few times, the pages show. It's happening alot now. Poo!