In the control panel under sounds, have you played each individual sound to see if one of them was the water drip?

Does this only happen when you load one particular web page or website? If so then then the "water drip" sound could just be an embedded sound in the source code of the webpage that gets triggered...

That would require hacking the registry, which is not a good idea if you're a novice.

I'm not sure but I think in XP Pro you have to go to tools-folder options-view, then scroll down to the checkbox that says remember each folder's settings.

Since you seem to have to type http:// before the address to access a site, here's a lazy way of doing it (as long as the address ends in .com) that will auto fill in http://www..com. Ex. type...

If you have any AOL 8.0 cd's, you will find a Java VM on it. I've installed it and it works great.

Try reinstalling IE6. If you downloaded it from windows update, the setup file should be in C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\ie6setup.exe