Fault in Wininet.dll

Yesterday I had a Windows XP client computer that generated a fault in Wininet.dll each time Internet Explorer 7 was started. And since IE seems to have hooks into a whole bunch of applications, those applications would error out as well. These included, Help and Support and Simply Accounting (seems that the .NET Framework was affected).

1. My first thought was to go back to an earlier restore point, but I couldn't because it would crash each time I opened Help and Support.
2. Next I created a new user and logged on as that user. this new user didn't experience the same issue, so I knew is was related to user settings rather than system settings.
3. Restored a restore point, but the original user issue was not resolved. However, now at least I could do some research by using IE and the new user account.
4. During research, I found a few articles talking about clearing cache with this issue. They were for older versions of Windows and IE, but I figured I'd give it a shot.
5. I was unable to clear the cache by using the Internet Options in Control Panel because it errored out. I was able to delete the files manually.
6. After the cache was cleared, all was good.