[vahardball]

Allow me to follow-up a bit more - I was able to uninstall SP1 and IE7 came back to life, the problem also affected my printing as I have setup IP printing to my main printer and it would not work either till I did the uninstall.

As the week worn on I did not pay much attention to the patches and downloads that were getting ready to install and all of a sudden IE stopped again... I was ticked

Checking the dates I found that patch KB947864 IE7 Security Update was the culprit - again I was able to uninstall the patch and regain use of IE.

I disabled the automatic install feature so that I could now determine what would and would not install.

Reading up on the KB947864 patch indicated also that the problem was with my security software Symantec Antivirus Corporate Edition 10.2.0.276 - I am running the same software on two other Vista machines one Business Edition and the other Ultimate, both of those systems accepted the KB947864 patch with no problems at all - not sure what is wrong with the HP Laptop running Vista Home Premium.

Symantec was not much help, or at least I could not find anything on their web site - I may just try to reinstall SAV after downloading the patch again - we shall see.

If anyone has more info - please post - thanks everyone