Likely not an issue with IE but with your computer itself. My PC is a few yers old and runs all the latest updates etc and occasionally IE does freeze up. Leave it a few seconds and it comes back to live. Think its just the processor can't handle busy webpages! On my laptop which is reasonably new, its fine, never had a problem.

You could always try clearing off any unused programs, run crap cleaner (www.ccleaner.com) then defragment the hard drive to see if that makes it any better!