Parental controls in 5.2, now have corrupted search engine in IE

Using XP SP3 Home. Have symptoms similar to:
http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/...ted-your/854f9563-5dfe-48fc-9180-0927339a93cf

After upgrading to 5.2, explanation points encouraged me to set up parental controls, even though I've never used them before. After trying setting all the accounts up as parents, I now start IE8 and see message:

A Program on your computer has corrupted your default search setting for Internet Explorer.
Internet Explorer has reset this setting to your original search provider.
Internet Explorer will now open Search Settings, where you can change this setting or install more search providers.​

This happens every time I start IE8 and I am unable to select a default search engine. Turning off parental controls has not helped. I don't know if this is a coincidence that this occurred or if the IE error is related to the parental controls.

 

ESET does not intervene in IE settings at all. I'd try disabling HTTP checking and HIPS, one at a time, to find out if it makes a difference. Should the problem persist, try uninstalling ESS (for a test) to see if there's actually a correlation with ESET.

 

Turning off Parental Controls did not help, but after rebooting, the error in IE went away. Turning back on Parental Controls did not cause the error to occur, so at this point, I'm assuming the two issues are unrelated.