A few people have had a hard time with the pop-up smilie window, but that window is not the 'end all be all' way to get smilies in your posts! You can manually type a smilie in using standard BB code brackets "[]" with the desired smilie in between!
Here is a list of all smilies available. To use them, just place the code in between brackets!
So I take it this isn't something you can fix on your end without us either remembering 55 BB codes or "upgrading" to IE7?
I usually just seek out other posts that have the smilie I want and cut and paste. I know... too much time on my hands.