Obviously I'm asking the community how to solve this problem. Cheers

The 'Community' seems to be a bit lacking here. Just shouting into the void apparently.

robertred, have you tried uninstalling then reinstalling Firefox?

Also, during these freezes, does pressing ctrl+alt+del do anything? Or does pressing ctrl+alt+del twice restart the system at least, without the need for switching off at the mains?

Thanks TechHorse for replying. Pressing C + A + D twice does not get around the problem. I am very reluctant to uninstall to reinstall because I will lose all my extensions and adblocks etc etc. If I use safemode then everything works but I do not have all my adblocks/ghostery etc and I am F.......g inundated with adverts. Thanks but the problem persists.

robertred, if the problem does not occur in troubleshoot mode then this could well be an issue with an add-on.

My advice would be to disable each add-on in turn, testing for the problem after each one, to determine if one of them is responsible.

To try this go to the add-ons page (press ctrl+shift+A), make sure you are in the Extensions section, and then toggle each add-on's Enable button to off, one at a time.

Note, disabling an add-on won't remove it altogether, but you might lose its custom settings. So you may wish to note down any changes that you have made first, before disabling.

Hello TechHorse, I have spent the morning disabling each add-on in turn. My Firefox web page still freezes after about 2 minutes and I have to switch the computer off. I'm sure it's to do with the firefox update. Everything was working fine until then. Cheers Robert

robertred, when a problem does not happen in Troubleshoot mode then it could be an issue with extensions, themes or hardware acceleration.

Add-ons have already been tested, so see the section "The problem does not occur in Troubleshoot Mode" in the following article for steps to test the other two. Perhaps you could start with testing hardware acceleration.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/troubleshoot-extensions-themes-to-fix-problems

Hello Techhorse, Thanks very much for your help because I have now sorted out the problem. I tried the 'hardware acceleration' suggestion but the problem persisted. I went back to the extensions and disabled Ghostery which I had not done before considering it an essential tool. Lo and behold, with Ghostery disabled, my Firefox platform works as before. So thanks for taking the time out to help me. Cheers Robert

Just curious... Is your computer a laptop, desktop, or DIY? If not DIY, what make and model? What graphics card and driver?

Robert, glad that you found the explanation for the problem. Hopefully the add-on authors can assist with a fix for this extension, if this is due to a bug at their end..