I honestly have no clue what's going on, but you can try several things. First of all, are you running a firewall and anti-virus with definitions that are kept up-to-date?  Do you have any spyware scanners? If not, I can get you some links together.

If you have all of the above, you can try repairing your windows installation. There are two ways I know to do this. Do both if the first doesn't work.

Running CheckDisk:
-Hit "Run" in your Start Menu (a window should open with a field to type in)
-Type "chkdsk /r" without the quotes. (thats chkdskSPACE/r)
-A message will show up in a black DOS window. It will be asking you a yes or no question. Hit "Y" and enter.
-Restart your computer and let it run

Repairing from your Windows CD:
-If you still have your windows CD, insert it into your CD-rom and restart your computer.
-During the startup, you'll get a message telling you to press any key if you want to boot from the disc. Hit any key. (Not the any-key )
-I can't remember the exact steps from here. Just find your Windows installation, and you should come to a page asking if you want to hit "R" to repair the current installation. Hit "R" and let it do its thing.

If you get confused after booting from the CD, I can look into getting you exact steps.

If scanning for viruses and spyware, having a firewall up, and repairing your Windows installation doesn't work, I really have no clue.

well i did the checkdisk thing and that did nothing so im about to do try repairing windows from the cd...and nope me and my dad are the only ones with admin powers on this computer....lil bro has limited acess...but yea thats what its doing...pretending like its gonna come up but doesnt, the lil hour glass even comes up for half a sec then leaves....dunno....

There's a recent critical update for IE 6 available.

Yea i went to window's update and nothing showed......not even a critical so......dunno, oh and it still wont let me get into my properties...i have no idea why....

Those aren't the best, but they're fine for the point at hand. I'm really not sure what happened to your display properties. If you tried everything I said and keep your firewall and virus defintitions up-to-date, I really have no clue.

The only alternative I can think of is reformatting.

I don't know about system restore because I don't use it.

As for the firewall and anti-virus, I use NOD32 and ZoneAlarm Pro. Both aren't free, but you may be able to find each on some P2P network.  ZoneAlarm does have a free version of their firewall, but I can't vouch for it.

You should also get an anti-trojan while you're at it. Anti-viruses aren't too keen on detecting and removing trojans. I personally use TrojanHunter 4. DiamondCS TDS-3 is also a good anti-trojan, but it is much too complicated for the novice user.