What operating system are you running?
Have you tried running an antivirus scan and spyware scans in safe mode? (press f8 and select it from the boot menu)
If you need a spyware scanner, try downloading
ad-aware or
spybot on another computer and then installing it on your home computer.
I'm not sure, but I think AOL explorer and Internet explorer use many of the same resources, so one problem could be manifesting itself in both. You might try downloading an alternative browser like
FireFox seeing if it's something wrong with the OS or the browser.