Hello Jim.

You may be having a problem with some Firefox add-on that is hindering your Firefox's normal behavior. Have you tried disabling all add-ons (just to check), to see if Firefox goes back to normal?

Whenever you have a problem with Firefox, whatever it is, you should make sure it's not coming from one of your installed add-ons, be it an extension, a theme or a plugin. To do that easily and cleanly, run Firefox in safe mode and select Disable all add-ons. If the problem disappears, you know it's from an add-on. Disable them all in normal mode, and enable them one at a time until you find the source of the problem. See this article for information about troubleshooting extensions and theme. You can troubleshoot plugins the same way.

If you want support for one of your add-ons, you'll need to contact its author.

Do a malware check with a few malware scan programs. You need to use all programs because each detects different malware. Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of the database.

http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware http://www.superantispyware.com/ - SuperAntispyware http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Spybot Search & Destroy http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php - Ad-Aware Free http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx - Windows Defender: Home Page .......... See also "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked and What to do when searches take you to the wrong search website