Oh-oh, lots of answers
Thanks everybody for the help... anyway...
... problem is gone Well, I guess I should give you some details. Curious?
Using DrWatson (and a lot of luck!) I found that probably COMCTL32.dll was the file replaced. I took it again from the Win98 CABS file and rebooted... voilĂ
Now everything works ok
So I wanted to find IF it could be possible that Avast! was the reason for such a problem. I uninstalled it, reinstalled it completely (default installation), then again uninstalled it, then installed it again (did I tell you I needed an antivirus?
) ...
nothing.
So, really, I have no reason to keep on thinking it was Avast! fault. Really, maybe I installed another program a couple of days ago and I don't remember... mmm...
So now I'm going to "deep" test Avast and -probably- write an article for a computer-related newsletter here in Italy and say if Avast is -IMHO- a good program or not. Of course I'll say that the tech forums here are full of people that are ready to help you
Thanks once more.
All the other stuff:
any version of IE less than version 6 is very unsafe
Any version of IE is very unsafe, that's why I use Opera since years (and security is not the only reason...)
So, you most likely have spyware (and who knows what else) that is causing your problem
No, I have AdAware and SpyBot S&D... and who knows what else
Once again thanks
everybodySverx