[ddouglass]

IE6 or 7? (You didn't mention that).
Try running Belarc Advisor (free). This will tell you whether or not all your updates actually installed correctly. You would be surprized at how many will say they successfully installed when they actually didn't.
The other major thing I can think of right now is to check to be sure you have the latest drivers for your audio and video cards.
Did you have any ZIP files and did you let the conversion for them run?
I understand your frustration but you are the only one that is having this many problems. That is not to say some are having a problem or two but nothing this bad.