Fundamentally yours

Strange happenings. If I open Explorer, where it has my default as Google,
then sometimes it cant find it the Google page.
When it does, a search sometimes crashes Explorer. If I search "search", it
always crashes. I notice as it does, the screen drops down a line.
It is ok to type in the URL on the url line, causing no problem.

I have a broadband connection via cable, and a shared connection.
The cable is hard wired to the main PC and I share with a netgear box
to another PC (XP)

I have AVG8. I have tried removing the AVG toolbar without success.
I do not have the Google toolbar.

Any suggestions would be welcome.