Im having problems with IE freezeing says ie exe is not running upon start up i have to re start it to make my icons appear i have IE 7 dont know if i want 8 on here yet i have windows xp sp3
I, too, use CCleaner.. it works wonders. Give it a try, just make sure to backup your registry before cleaning it (it'll prompt you to do the backup and guide you through it)
CCleaner, Advance System Care, GlarySoft Utilities and for Defrag i use Auslogics Reg Defrag and Auslogics Disk Defrag these programs work wonders for me =]
I had some of these same problems and more so I gave up on it and downloaded opera browser, forefox, and safari for windows this gives me 3 browsers that are better than IE