I'll have to look at what specific plug ins are installed, but it's only a handful, and they seemed pretty standard (like JAVA, PDF viewer). I had the computer set to medium internet security, some pop up blocking, but every time I would visit this site the settings were automatically turned off. After going through this several times, I upped security to maximum within IE and in my internet control panel, but once again, a visit to weather.com shut off all security settings. So I will take your advice Bonk, and I will stop using weather.com.
that portable apps site sounds promising, I will have to pick up a decent capacity flash drive and give it a shot.