See How to set the home page and Firefox hangs or is not responding - How to fix

It should be easy to reset the homepage, if firefox refuses to accept changes look at How to fix preferences that won't save

There are multiple possible reasons for firefox hanging but reading the article about it may help.

thanks john, i have now got rid of the second page which was opening up. But as far as the hanging goes - it seems arbitrary, I cannot connect it to a specific activity, so I don't know how to deal with it. Maybe it will improve now the second page has gone??

Try to run Firefox using the minimum number of enabled extensions / Add-ons

• see Troubleshoot issues with plugins like Flash or Java to fix common Firefox problems
• also use Windows XP task manager (Ctrl+Alt+ Del -> ) and use the Process and Performance tabs to try to work out how hard the CPU is working, and what is running. Security updates or other background tasks may be slowing things down see also Firefox uses too much memory or CPU resources - How to fix

hi, this is really all above my head!!

but here's some info in case you can make sense of it!

I can only see AVG safe search, Mcafee site advisor, java console and Microsoft.NET framework assistant as extensions.

There are about 25 plug- ins but I don't know which are necessary and which aren't!

Task manager tells me:-

CPU usage between 0 and 9% PF usage 1.30gb Processes 60

Under processes the main ones showing changing levels are -

Firefox. exe - 00 - 03 356,652 K memory use and teatimer.exe - 00 - 01 90,240 K memory use

The CPU usage at up to ca. 10% is fairly low and will not be a problem.

You can easily temporarily disable plugins. For basic operation of firefox you will normally need the plugin 'Mozzila Default...' all others are additional features, and on some sites you may not need any of those other 24. If you use

• Tools -> Add-ons
• you get options to disable plugins and extensions, the setting may easily be reversed, no need to actually uninstall the feature, and if you need it say for multi media webpages they are easily re-enabled.

I do not know if having two separate site advisors may be a problem. (I have used Norton and McAfee together without problems though)

I guess teatimer.exe is related to security, as is AVG, it should be noted that sometimes multiple security related programmes, from differing providers may not always work well together.

PS

• AVG some features may be uneccessary see Configuring AVG Internet Security
• I think I also I recolect mention that its Safe Search, sometimes causes problems with the location bar entries

You can try to disable or remove the Java Console extension(s). That extension is not needed. If you have the Java Quick Starter then disable that extension as well. See Tools > Add-ons > Extensions

See:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Java#Multiple_Java_Console_extensions

Disable the Java Quick Starter extension: Tools -> Add-ons -> Extensions

• Control Panel -> Java -> Advanced tab -> Miscellaneous -> Java Quick Starter (disable)

See also:

• Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems
• Firefox hangs or is not responding - How to fix

ok, it just froze again, then top of page says "firefox not responding" then a message "plug-in container.exe has stopped working".

I am not an IT expert, just want to be able to use my pc! I really don't understand most of what you are telling me to read guys.

Having 2 site advisors was not a probblem before the update to 3.6.13.

Have disabled Java extensions now.

Firefox as it is initially installed is capable of basic web browsing.

Increasingly web pages contain complicated multimedia, eg videos that a user may want to play. Or you want to do something additional that needs other resources such as whatever you do with Google, other than a basic web search, or you want to open a pdf file and display it within firefox.

Some of these facilities use the 'plugin container' and although it may be problematic the alternative to that stopping working may be that firefox itself crashes. The plugin container segregates some of these other features.

If you have problems, the basic troubleshooting is to remove or disable features that are not being used with firefox, and if applicable reduce some of the workload on the computer itself (although the latter may not be your current problem).

Part of the problem could be the use of multiple security related software programs, sometimes they do not work well together, also note the tips in an earlier link about configuring AVG for firefox use.