an odd lockup

[rjz]

I have windows xp sp2. Wile I was looking at posts on here my computer lcoked up for about 1 minute with no mouse movement then my system speeker beeped then I still had a partial lockup and I finally gpt task man up with 100 cpu on IE. What causes this? Any ideas?

[Aegis]

Internet Explorer is known to be unstable, not to forget insecure.