It's possible that you are 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 caused by one (or more than 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 (don't forget to select Disable all add-ons when you start safe mode). 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 themes and this one for plugins.

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

If the problem does not disappear when all add-ons are disabled, please tell me, so we can work from there. Please have no fear of following my instructions to the line, as all can be easily undone.

I have the same problem. I TOTALLY uninstalled Firefox and reinstalled blank, i.e. no add ons, no themes, and still the problem occurred. It loads VERY slowly and then for the first five minutes keeps freezing and I constantly get "not responding" messages.

Every time I search this problem on the internet the reply is always about add-ons or extensions when that has nothing to do with it.

Help, or I will have to turn to another browser.

The problem still exists with my browser. The freezing still persists. I'm not really happy with what's happening with Firefox. I used to be such a hardcore Firefox fan but now I don't feel the same due to the consistencies. And whenever I try to contact support on Firefox, they say it is related with add-ons but it's not. That's just an excuse. I think Firefox needs to re-assess all the complaints and make the browser more stable. This has been going on since Firefox moved into 3.0.

My computer does the same thing and all I read was..blah blah maybe it's a virus ,check ur add-ons..Guys We've all been loyal since 3.0 and this is what we get for our Loyalty ..sounds like a political answer .Plus Firefox IT guys Word of Mouth can be good or in this case very Bad..so show us you have the balls to give us answers ie THE TRUTH.

  PS :I've done everything u told us all to do,why should I use SWIron for a backup??

Look at my recent post..I want the truth on how too fix this "not responding"