Following is apparently a firewall issue preventing Firefox (Fx) from loading any pages. It's not exactly Fx that is the culprit, but it sort of is, so I hope someone can solve it here. I have one old machine that works amazingly on XP and - please try to continue to take me seriously - I run Fx 5.0b7. Thanks in advance for upgrading lectures but on this particular machine I want to continue as is, which loads and sufficiently processes 95% of webpages. AAR versions may very well have nothing to do with the following problem, so set that detail aside if you can. The specific failure that I will describe is essentially 100% reproducible (how often does that happen!). I'll be whistling along with 15 different Fx windows but when I load this one particular page, my firewall gets excited and if I don't whitelist, Fx will not load or refresh any other pages. Can't even Control-N and get google.com (yet pings fine. Only Fx fails to load pages.). Further, when I close Fx, I get a "crash window": D3D9Window: firefox.exe Application Error The instruction at "0x0d75609c" referenced memory at "0x00000014". The memory could not be "read". Click on OK to terminate the program. (The first mem location varies, but it always gets 14 for the second mem location.) The "guilty" page is from a residential utility site (my natural gas company): https://www.atmosenergy.com/accountcenter/urlfetch/viewPdf.html?printDoc=123456789012 Sorry, but for privacy I changed the 12 digit number at the end, so you will have to endure my description of what happens. It _successfully_ loads a pdf page; the tab says viewPdf.html (application/pdf Object) I then immediately get a progress window titled Adobe Updater that says "Checking for updates for Adobe Updater" It quickly fails (BTW I've now told my firewall to permanently refuse Adobe to connect to the web) and the text changes to "The update server is not responding, which means it might be offline at the moment, or the Internet or firewall settings may be incorrect. Please try again later." Now as soon as I try to even refresh any other webpage, my Sygate Personal Firewall "SMC.exe" version 5.5 reports, to my great worry: "A new DLL has been loaded by Firefox. This could happen if you have updated it recently. Click Detail to see more information. Do you want to allow it to access the network?" (Yes and No buttons) It says: "The new DLLs have been loaded: C:\Program Files\ADOBE\Reader 9.0\Reader\AdobeUpdater.dll" I click NO, which I always do for suspicious/unsolicited requests from the firewall. Now from this point forward, Fx can't even get Google. No pages can be refreshed. Restarting Fx fixes it, but as soon as I try again to load the culprit page, boom. Note that every single problem described above does not occur over months and hundreds of other sites' page loads. It's 100% reproducible. So it's unlikely that this one's a "level one user error" though I confess to occasionally have that capacity :) If I restart Fx with the cable modem unpowered, the problem page "loads" so to speak (with Server not found timeout), then I power the modem, 60 seconds later all other pages can be loaded/reloaded fine. If I now reload the atmosenergy page, with a live web connection, trouble. Loading that webpage, and connecting, is essentially disturbing my ability to use Fx. BTW I have attempted to instruct Adobe to never check for updates, from within Adobe Reader, no help. I can't delete AdobeUpdater.dll *even when Fx is closed.* I would love to find a way to kill this mother ******* .DLL. Maybe restart XP in safe mode & DOS prompt? Here I believe is the fundamental problem: the Firewall apparently is insisting that I "approve" of some DLL (that I don't even want on my machine) in Fx contacting the web. As a rule, I say "no" to the Firewall popups for everything that I can get away with, and live my life by whitelisting as little as tolerable. By saying No, the firewall refuses any further web connectivity by Fx. Am I simply mandated to say "yes" to this suspicious request? Even though adobe should be fine (unless spoofed), and the utility co. should be fine (unless hacked), I don't think I'm being overboard paranoid by not bending over to the request. I just reinstalled Fx 5.0b7 so I doubt it's from anything I've done to Fx. It's been weeks since I modified addons, of which only 3 are enabled - NoScript, FlashGot and Facebook Disconnect. I never knowingly told Fx to "load a new DLL" despite the firewall report. Finally, I can load a typical .pdf page, e.g. http://images10.newegg.com/User-Manual/User_Manual_76-206-019.pdf. It's just that atmosenergy page that fouls everything. My objective is to be able to load the desired page, without updating Fx or Adobe or my OS :). And such that I do not answer a mysterious Firewall question with, "Sure, I'll permit some mysterious request to connect my box with the web." I know this is a painfully long post. FWIW I worked for a very long time to balance paring it down for your benefit, while trying to preserve all seemingly useful details. I also spent hours testing results and attempting a myriad of variations to rule out false trails (e.g. numerous reboots which take a nontrivial amount of time). Not trying to be a princess or act heroic, but just letting you know that I took many measures to reduce the length of this post and minimize the waste of YOUR valuable time. Thank you for your patience and attention.