What was the link? You could have opened a window where it runs a code to open the same window, and so on it goes until everything is paged, then your paging file gets filed, once that's filed, everything becomes slower as it tries to distribute time between everything. The best thing to have done would be
hold [CTRL]+[ALT] then press [DEL] You should see iexplore.exe, right click on that, and select End process tree. (Ending process tree ends everything the program is running. But I do it again to more. I had a similar problem when I tried a crack, it just opened it self over and over, so I used the Task Manager. I got suspicious when nothing was happening and I was out of page file, which was weird as I have 6GB RAM, shouldn't get filled that quickly and the page file is set at the minimum 16MB (until I can be bothered to increase it)
I would like to know what the site was. Not all sites are safe. Firefox was a better conversion for me as it was similar in appearance to IE6. I don't see what the issue wit h it is really. Firefox has had tabbed windows for as long as I can remember, IE7 has only just started it. FF had tabs since version 1.x (I think as that was when I used it, or pre 1.x) FF is now on version 3.0.10. I have the version 2.0 look as I prefer it. IE7 has tabbed browsing in a way that defeats the object, it opens new tabs in the immediate right. I find this hard to keep track of. FF has the ability since version 2.x to restore a session, which is a lifesaver should it crash and it restores you exactly as you were before, including some downloads which I thought was a bonus. IE7 has the option as well, but you have to set it up, it's appearance is so limited, I find it harder to use. With FF you can use a spell check addon which is pretty useful.
I use FF and IE6, I hate IE7 and use IE6 as a backup only (and for router access) IE7 seems to have removed the buttons that I use, it's fortunate that I know the keyboard commands for them.
FF is far more advanced than IE anyway. Flashblock is probably the best addon I have found as well as adblock