You may have seen that I posted this on a previous thread. That thread is closed and I can't add to it, so now I'm going to post the answer to the problem. If you have Total Defense from what used to be known as "CA" or Computer Associates, this firewall/virus scanner is the problem. My subscription has run out and i have uninstalled this and installed a new scanner from another company...all is well.

metalman's other closed thread is here - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/942613