Internet Options won't load/IE won't work...

I have a Packard Bell EasyNote laptop running with Windows XP Home, Service Pack 2, Intel Pentium M processor 1.40 GHz, 512MB of RAM and Internet Explorer 7. Something went wrong with this system suddenly which stopped IE7 to work. Earlier it was working well but from yesterday whenever I try running internet explorer it says Offline, and when I try to make it online and start, it only loads the Address bar, Back and Forward keys and the Google search bar. That’s it. It wont allow me to do anything on this browser. And after a minute it itself gets shutdown with an error message saying:

“IEXPLORER.EXE - Application Error - The instruction at 0x28f2f57b referenced, memory at 0x28f2f57b. The memory could not be read.”

I thought upgrading to Internet Explorer 8 may fix the problem but it wont allow me to update as well. Any help would be appreciated.

Well most probably it is the problem because of any of your Add-Ons installed in Internet Explorer. You can confirm this by running IE in No Add-Ons mode. You can do this by going to Start > All Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Internet Explorer (No Add-Ons). If the browser is working fine in no Add-ons, then you should try enabling one by one add-on and see which one is creating the problem. Once found uninstall the same and the problem will get fixed.

i am i need of getting into my internet options but the icon is there but when i try to open it nothing happens can you please tell me what to do to open it