I think these two are related, thus I am bringing them up together.

1. Very often when searching through websites on I.E. 6, my browser loads up a page, but the little windows XP symbol near the _[]X is spread across the entire top part of the page, it doesn't load, and says the window is busy if I try to cancel it often. This problem also coincides with IE taking up tons more memory and slowing down my computer.

2. When searching for files through File Search on my computer, Explorer (not Internet Explorer) goes into a non-response stage and I have to ctrl-alt-delete it.

How might I fix both?

Clear the cache.

Tried and didn't work.

Did you recently install anything?

No. This has been a problem I've suffered with for about two or three months now but it has gotten worse recently.

Did you install something 2 or 3 months ago?

It could be anything, there could be a program running in the backround.

sounds like some kind of maleware.

go here and scan your machine:
http://www.bitdefender.com/scan8/ie.html

Don't go scan your thing for malware, if I were you I'd just format my PC again, there's no point in dealing with the impossible to fix!

Yeah you have a trojan most likely that either tracks where you "surf"(including data collection on passwords etc. OR you have a trojan worm that uses your computer for denial of service attacks.

Go to www.trendmicro.com and run the free online virus scanner(hopefully it will still run for you.)

You could use adaware or spybot or whatever is hot right now to get rid of spyware.

You can manualy edit the registry to "look" for stuff. This is very hard to do and you should know what your doing before trying. Most spyware garbage is in multiple areas of the registry, but a quick peek at Hkey_local_machine/software/microsoft/windows/currentversion/run - will give you a good idea how much crap loads itself everytime you boot up windows.

THanks for the suggestions. I haven't done a spy/mal/adware scan in a while.

I'll go do both right now.

Defragment your hard drive, and run Scandisk (full scan including surface scan).