As I said, I am NOT a computer newbie - I am the guy that all my friends and family go to in order to fix their 'puters.
I have tried ALL of my usual tricks [YES, including software updates]. Usually, my last resort is to search the Internet - AND there are USUALLY posts about the recent problem.
THIS time, NO recent posts ...
I got it out of the very annoying IE restarts and font security alerts in IE by two things. First, I uninstalled some OEM installed crap programs for telephony and such then followed up with manual removal of their residual directories that I could locate. This got rid of the IE9 restarts. The font security alerts I got rid of by wading through the McAfee AV/firewall configuration. The McAfee has a so called optimizer function and did a deep scan with this. The optimizer found about 2000 registry goofs, active X goofs, file fragments, dead end links, etc. First thing it did in the fix was to set a restore point then fixed most of them.
I got it out of the very annoying IE restarts and font security alerts in IE by two things. First, I uninstalled some OEM installed crap programs for telephony and such then followed up with manual removal of their residual directories that I could locate. This got rid of the IE9 restarts. The font security alerts I got rid of by wading through the McAfee AV/firewall configuration. The McAfee has a so called optimizer function and did a deep scan with this. The optimizer found about 2000 registry goofs, active X goofs, file fragments, dead end links, etc. First thing it did in the fix was to set a restore point then fixed most of them.