ok.. i think i found the problem
from reading this:
http://social.answers.microsoft.com/...78-4e64-aa6c-b83cb26e110d
it made me realize that i did recently install AVG anti virus which added an addon to IE.
i forgot about that because right after i installed it, my power cord died, and i was without laptop for 2 weeks, and then when i got new power cord and went to play, i started getting this odd error. i went to manage IE addons, disabled it and cleared cache, and now i no longer get the error
after figuring this out myself i googled it a bit:
http://romenlaw.blogspot.com/...9/05/ie8-avg-problem.html
and found a couple other sites that seemed to hint at problems with avg and IE8
if you have avg deepcode try disabling the ie8 addon, thats my best guess
and i'll see if this error pops up again for me now... hope it doesn't