Can you try creating a new Firefox profile? In addition to bypassing most current add-ons and custom settings, it should have complete fresh settings databases and a fresh cache folder.

Close Firefox and start up in the Profile Manager as described in Profile Manager - Create, remove or switch Firefox profiles. Any time you want to switch profiles, close Firefox and return to this dialog.

If the new profile is free of crashes, you can migrate key settings like bookmarks from your problem profile to the new one. See Recovering important data from an old profile.

Any luck?

You might also consider disabling the new protected mode in Flash 11.3, since that feature is currently being debugged. See this support article from Adobe under the heading "Last Resort": Adobe Forums: How do I troubleshoot Flash Player's protected mode for Firefox?

disabling flash did not fix the issue at all. I even uninstalled flash. Still the same behavior. I will try your profile switch suggestion next

I tried the profile manager. About 3 seconds after the profile screen comes up, firefox stops working.

Try to boot the computer in Windows Safe mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test to see if that works.

I uninstalled and reinstalled FF14. when it started it came up in the safe mode dialog - I disabled all addons, reset FF menus, etc and started up again. It seems to be runing OK. I re-enabled ad block, forecast fox, and download status bar, and still running OK. Flash is missing- I uninstalled it from my computer earlier