It's not empty, the files don't show because they're hidden (and possibly also marked as system) files, and you've disabled showing them in Windows. They'll be the backup from before you disabled System Restore, but if System Restore says you never made a backup, then they're virtually unuasble.

In Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs, is there an option to uninstall IE6? Try that, you can still uninstall from safe mode