iexplore.exe shows in Task Manager, but fails to open - Niteowl

Hi all,

My System:
XP Pro SP2, Internet Explorer 6.0 w/all updates, 128-bit encryption
2.8ghz cpu, 1G RAM

I have recently noticed that more than 50% of the time, when I click to open
up Internet Explorer it was taking several times to actually open the
browser.

When I began checking more closely in the Task Manager, it would show
several entries of "iexplore.exe", and I noticed the ones whose size was
showing as about 14K were the ones that weren't opening the window.. the one
with the size of 25K did open the window, and I could "end task" on the
others and the browser would remain open.

I checked a little further and found it was referring to a prefetch folder
with a file name of IEXPLORE.EXE-3AA8CDEA.pf , and I did a google search and
found conflicting info about whether to delete the contents of this folder
or not...   also I don't know if this is relative to the problem of the
browser not opening until the second or subsequent attempts.

Any wisdom on this issue.

thanks,
niteowl