hi laurayw, that may be caused by the shockwave flash addon. you can set it to "always ask" in the firefox menu > addons > plugins section so that it will only get executed once you really need it.

Thanks Philipp ... it was already set that way. I am now only today able to get back into Firefox after using Safe Mode (which I had to access from Internet Explorer) and then doing the 'REFRESH'. I'm not sure if this has fixed, and there is something strange about Firefox now ... missing my Toolbar and other things ... thanks again.