Internet Explorer 6 won't open links which require a new window

Hi,
When I click on any link which opens a new window, the new window opens but remains blank. Anyone got any ideas of how to fix it(apart from the obvious remedy of ditching IE6. I've tried turning off pop-up blocker, ZoneAlarm and Kaspersky anti-virus but that doesn't make any difference. I recently installed scripting for internet explorer(from MS.com site) and suspect that may be the cause but there doesn't seem to be any way of uninstalling it and the machine fails to restore to a restore point prior to the installation. I'm running XP pro with service pack 2 installed

IE Fixed but......

Well I found a fix for the IE explorer fault at:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/281679
I followed the instructions on there and also uninstalled and reinstalled the latest Internet explorer update, one or both of which actions seems to have fixed the problem. In the meantime I installed Firefox which seems to function OK. However in the course of trying to fix IE6 I came across a couple of other things that make me sratch my head a little. In control panel I have some duplicate icons/shortcuts, in the system32 folder I have a quite a lot of copies of some files e.g alg.exe, alg(2).exe,...alg(6)(2).exe,alg(7).exe. I wonder could this be caused by a couple of failed system restores which I attempted? and is it OK to delete the 'versions'? At first I thought it maight have been a virus but I've scanned my computer both using Kaspersky and Trend Micro housecall, and with adaware and Spybot which haven't found any problems and it works OK. The other problem which I discovered was when I thought to repair IE6 using the XP Pro CD. The XP Pro CD which came with my computer is an OEM CD but the PC doesn't seem to recognise it - the product key on the sticker on my PC is different from the key in the PC(obtained using ViewKeyXp.exe). From what I've read elsewhere on this board and elsewhere I see that it's possible to edit the correct key into the registry - anyone had any experience of doing this and know if it leads to any problems? The company which built my PC, Carrera, went out of business earlier in the year so I can't contact them for assistance.