Boot the computer in Windows Safe Mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test to see if that helps. Does the Network tab (click the first entry and open Timings) in the Web Console (Firefox/Tools > Web Developer;Ctrl+Shift+K) give any clue about the cause of this issue? Reload the page (F5) to make Firefox show the data. ---- Do a malware check with some malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.<br> Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.<br> All these programs have free versions. Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan. *Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware:<br>http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php *AdwCleaner:<br>http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/<br>http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Removal-Tools/AdwCleaner.shtml *SuperAntispyware:<br>http://www.superantispyware.com/ *Microsoft Safety Scanner:<br>http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx *Windows Defender: Home Page:<br>http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx *Spybot Search & Destroy:<br>http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html *Kasperky Free Security Scan:<br>http://www.kaspersky.com/security-scan You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller. *Anti-rootkit utility TDSSKiller:<br>http://support.kaspersky.com/5350?el=88446 See also: *"Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked