I'm running explorer 6 on windows xp service pack 1. I was trying to shop for cellphones today and everytime i would hit the "checkout" button, it would show the little thing saying you are now being transferred to secure site, and I would click okay or yes or whatever it is, and then it would say the page could not be displayed, perhaps the site is having technical difficulties, yada yada. I tried refreshing the page and that didn't work, and then I found out it wouldn't work on other sites too. Basically any site that you can shop on won't let me check out.

I had some spy ware on my computer and downloaded ad aware to get rid of that the day before yesterday, and then for some reason windows media stopped playing any of my files so I did a system restore to the day before I downloaded Ad aware. I wasn't sure if any of that would affect this. Windows media now works fine, but I'd like to be able to make purchases on my computer. Please help!

Do you have the 128 bit security encryption pack for IE? I would follow through with your spyware hunt though.
You could also try putting those particular sites into your trusted zone.