I am having the same problem over the last several days. I also get the endlessly recycling green bar. It started at the end of last week, I think. I have no problem on my home computer... Running Norton 360 2.0 on WinXP SP3, disabling Phishing did not seem to do anything. Will try the temp file suggestion.
Trying to figure out if I have changed something, but haven't installed or made any changes till today. I'm trying to managint an important project, and hope someone can figure this one out.