Firefox stopped working - any ideas?

[systempat]

Background: PC is running Windows XP on a dual-core Athlon machine. Internet is a broadband cable connection thru a Linksys router. The XP setup has several user accounts.

When using my account the Firefox browser has stopped working as of 3 days ago. I get either real slow page loads of sites I never had a problem with or no page load at all ( "address not found" ). If I use IE7 from the same account it seems to be working poorly as well but not quite as bad.

Another PC on the same router is experiencing no problems on internet response at the same time. I also have switched to another user account on my system ( that does not have admin privileges). Firefox works fine from there. What could be blocking Firefox on the one account? I'm not getting page redirects, just no response at all.

As a starting point I have scanned for malware/spyware using Malwarebytes. And using Avira anti-virus. Both are showing no problems.

[pam123]

It sounds as if you've got a software firewall blocking outgoing but only for your admin account.

Is there anything that loads at start up on the admin account only ?
Any settings you changed or programs you've updated that only the admin account can run ?

[systempat]

I was playing with software firewalls a bit. Was running the default Windows frewall, then downloaded and tried a different firewall. From Webroot. I was not satisfied with that one and uninstalled it. I'm now not running any firewall at all. The main security is in the Linksys router which is a NAT firewall.
Any advice on checking startup programs and services? There are quite a few of these and it's not obvious what many of them are doing.

Pat

[systempat]

One additional note. I was trying to research for other reports of the same problem in Firefox 3. One said that Flash player if it was at version 9 caused problems like this in FF and to update to version 10. Mine is already at 10. The other was to clear the cache and cookies for Firefox. I did that. Did not cure the problem.

Pat

[systempat]

One more note - can you tell I'm frustrated about this? - is if Firefox is open and has recieved the error for failing to open a page, then when I open IE7 it will fail to load pages as well. When I close Firefox then the IE7 works OK.
How can one browser affect the other one???

Pat

[pam123]

You messed up the settings in Internet Options and I think you've set up a browser battle as to which is the default browser.
Pick one to be your default browser and then go change the settings in Internet Options (Internet Properties) back to their defaults.

If that won't do the trick then you'll have to uninstall/reinstall Firefox but try that first.

[systempat]

Umm, I'm a little confused on this advice
[[You messed up the settings in Internet Options and I think you've set up a browser battle as to which is the default browser.
Pick one to be your default browser and then go change the settings in Internet Options (Internet Properties) back to their defaults.]]
Internet Options only has settings for IE. I'm on XP home if that makes a difference. You can set it to be the default browser, or not. Nothing about Firefox in there. Would prefer to set FF as the default. (previous bad experience with activeX scripts in IE).
Also I see nothing about resetting to defaults. I went to Start >> Control Panel >> Internet Options

If not fixed soon I will be moving to another browser. Have downloaded Google Chrome and tried it but not sure I like it. Seems to have some trouble displaying pages with a lot of linked content, like Yahoo or the local newspaper.
Pat

[pam123]

In Firefox Tools>Options>General >System Default

Always check to see that Firefox is the default browser at start up

[systempat]

Okay I got it working now. What I had was 2 problems. Following some advice I found, I cleared all the cache and cookies on Firefox. This may have helped.
Also I discovered about this time that the cable modem was having problems. It would drop the connection or else it was spontaneously rebooting itself. This was a little hard to see as the modem sits by the primary TV and not by my computer. Contacted Qwest phone company and after they looked at it from their end they shipped me a replacement cable modem. This came after 2 days and I installed it. Works good - after a little setup issue - and problem is gone.

Pat

[pam123]

Glad you're up and running and nice catch with the modem.