When I click on a link within most web pages, IE7 will freeze and I am unable to do anything with IE after that.
I also found that right clicking in directories with Explorer can also cause a freeze.
Done a virus scan check and also checked the registry for errors and seems to be clean.

There are some many things that this can be - from video drivers to memory to spyware. So, has this only recently happened to IE7 or has it always exhibited this behavior? Do you have another browser installed on your machine like Firefox or Opera? Do they exhibit the same behavior? You can look at the processes your machine is running by holding down Ctrl-Shift-ESC together. First, count the number of processes then see if you see something running that may seem out of place. Download something like Ad-Aware or Spybot Search and Destroy to find spyware on your machine that may be trying to intercept the links you are clicking. And, you might report on how much ram is on your machine (when running several applications IE can be a hog).

I get the same thing so your not alone. IE7 has issues that exist in the real world but as its not everyone and there is no real pattern, then it becomes something that is not urgent to fix, at least that's how I see it.

I have bought several spyware removal programs and tried them, all traces of spyware are reomoved from the system and are now stopped on entry.
The behaviour of IE7 has been around for several weeks now, after a Windows update I think.
The main problem is that clicking on a link to go to the next page or an external link within a page often crashes IE7 without any warning or error display (just clears off the screen)
Other times it will freeze and I am unable to do anything except bring up Task Manager and try and clear IE7 from memory (there seems to be several instances of it running at one time)

I wonder if there is a way to remove IE7 and re-install it?

My machine has 4G of ram, so that shouldn't be an issue.

New development:
I didn't notice this before, but when in Google mail and using the search funtion within the mails, no problem, but if I try and search the web I get an error message and then IE7 crashes and clears off the screen.
Runtime error!
Program: C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\iexploer.exe

This application has requested the Runtime to terminate in an unusual way.
Please contact the application's support team for more information.

TRy running SFC /Scannow to find and fix system files including IE7 which is built into Windows Vista.

Yes I have tried running SFC /Scannow, it is available in XP too.
Found no errors, problem still persists.

Can anyone tell me how to remove IE7 and go back to IE6, I never had this problem until I made the upgrade.

Add/remove programs and make sure show updates is checked then look for Windows Internet Explorer 7.

You may want to try re-installing IE7 after you remove it.

Or, since Microsoft is going to "require" you to download or update to IE 7 if you are running XP in February (or at least that is what is being bandied about), you may just have to put it right back on your system again even if you remove it. If you like the Triton engine that IE is based on, you could try TheWorld Browser as an alternative to IE: http://www.ioage.com/en/index.htm . At least it seems to be pretty stable, works well with memory, and you can update your system with it through WindowsUpdate.

Thanks for that info Sampson.
I tried removing IE7 but there were so many programs that would be effected by its removal I thought I should leave it alone. I will try the other browser and see if the problems are eliminated.

Update, I have read that our problem could be related to the plug ins for various functions, namely flash and shockwave. I disabled them and it did not crash, hang or anything, however some sites use them so it's not really the ideal choice to disable.

I am trying The World Browser and so far it hasn't given any problems and looks very simialr to IE (some parts I like better)
I haven't uninstalled IE7 as yet, because of all the programs that it;s removal will affect.