IE8 fails to start unless as administer

This happens on a Dell 1525 which was just upgraded from an up-to-date Vista. It happens when all add-ons are disabled as well. Furthermore, when it does run as Administrator, www.cnn.com fails to display at all, but other sites do. The first time the cnn page was attempted, I got a warning that the page needed an add-on, but named no names. Still happened when I enabled all add-ons.

So I downloaded firefox and it does not require admin privelge, but it also does not display the cnn page.

This is on my wife's laptop, and she will not be happy when she finds out--she is not a fan of change.

Yes, didn't work; I finally bit the bullet and did a clean install which solved the problem.

Yes; no luck. DId a clean install which eliminated the problems.