Internet Explorer 11 dying when access Favorites (star) button on Windows 7

Internet Explorer 11 (64 bit on Windows 7) has been giving me problems for a while, dying when I push the Favorites button. Unfortunately, one time it didn't die, and the next time I ran it, IE remembered that my Favorites (star) button was pushed to show the favorites/history pane and this time, IE dies on start up, so now I cannot even bring up IE.

Here's the error from the EVENT LOG:

Faulting application name: IEXPLORE.EXE, version: 11.0.9600.17280, time stamp: 0x53f262eb
Faulting module name: WININET.dll, version: 11.0.9600.17280, time stamp: 0x53f26cca
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000046f7
Faulting process id: 0x1e6c
Faulting application start time: 0x01cfd200e2bb556c
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\IEXPLORE.EXE
Faulting module path: C:\Windows\system32\WININET.dll
Report Id: 50951b45-3e00-11e4-a616-001fbc091bfa

Both the 32 and 64 bit versions die.

Any idea?

Update:

The last time it died, the favorites button was pushed. Now, every time I start IE it dies because it is retaining the state of the app. A partial help would be to help me identify tghe registry setting that controls the state.

Update 2

Since the program was dying originally whoever I clicked the Favorites button to open the Favorites\History panel, I was thinking "Maybe I should delete all of my favorites, moving them to my desktop for now, theorizing that perhaps there is some fav shortcut that is corrupt in some way.

When I did so, I dialog box appeared indicating that the files were being "Smart Moved." I did a quick Google and found that this may be related to using a Windows Explorer Add on to create a file/folder(?) junction. I do recall using it to relocate large folders, eg, Itunes from my small C:\ SDD to a larger drive, but I did not intentionally touch the Favorites folder. However, I might have indirectly done the same thing when I used Windows built in functionality to move some of my standard folders of my C drive. I thought I was copying only the small Favorites folder to my desktop, but when I saw I was also moving my whole "Download" folder, I cancelled it and hit Control + Z to undo the move.

Since the program was dying originally whoever I clicked the Favorites button to open the Favorites\History panel, I was thinking "Maybe I should delete all of my favorites, moving them to my desktop for now, theorizing that perhaps there is some fav shortcut that is corrupt in some way.

When I did so, I dialog box appeared indicating that the files were being "Smart Moved." I did a quick Google and found that this may be related to using a Windows Explorer Add on to create a file/folder(?) junction. I do recall using it to relocate large folders, eg, Itunes from my small C:\ SDD to a larger drive, but I did not intentionally touch the Favorites folder. However, I might have indirectly done the same thing when I used Windows built in functionality to move some of my standard folders of my C drive. I thought I was copying only the small Favorites folder to my desktop, but when I saw I was also moving my whole "Download" folder, I cancelled it and hit Control + Z to undo the move and was pleansantly surprised that this "move" and subsequent "undo" apparently had some positive effect.

Problem solved, by accident.