Max Help/Documentation issues in Win7/IE8

On Win7/32 w/ IE8 (Which I assume is the engine for Max's Doc/Reference/xml, etc?), if I open Max 6 and select the Documentation item (lower left corner), the new window essentially crashes ("not responding", etc in title bar) for 20 seconds. This does not occur on the Windows XP install.

When the new window finally populates, what I see under Windows 7 w/ IE8 is RADICALLY different than XP. The Windows 7 installation has a section on the right side of the documentation window w/ Objects, Tutorials, Vignettes tabs, Search, etc., that does not exist on the Windows XP install.

The bigger issue is that it just doesn't function properly.
If I load the Live Object Model reference, for example, the entire "Access" column is empty in the tables that comprise the majority of the page.

If this is browser-related, is there some way to force it to use a different browser?

Thanks for any help.