IE7 HELP!!!!!!!!

Hello, recently i have reinstalled windows xp onto my computer... and i had ie5 or 6, and it worked fine... until i upgraded to ie8, all of a sudden every webpage i go to i get "Internet Explorer cannot display the webpage" i thought "hey before i reinstalled windows i had ie7, so why dont i just downgrade?". so i downgraded and i still get the same message. i tried to use google chrome, and it works, but my parents want to be able to use internet explorer. sp could anybody give me so insight on what i could do, this is very frustrating and ive been going at this for days.