Try disabling the Ask Toolbar extension.

Thank you for the help. It was really starting to make me angry.

You're welcome.

I had this problem too. I didn't have the Ask Toolbar, but I did have a Ravenwood Addon, on disabling that and restarting Firefox fixed the problem.

i am having the same problem.. and the ask toolbar is currently inactive and not on my toolbar... what do i do?

Start Firefox in Use Troubleshoot Mode in Firefox to check if one of the add-ons is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Tools > Add-ons > Themes).

• Don't make any changes on the Safe mode start window.

See:

• Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems

If it does work in Safe-mode then disable all extensions and then try to find which is causing it by enabling one at a time until the problem reappears.

• Use "Disable all add-ons" on the Safe mode start window to disable all extensions.
• Close and restart Firefox after each change via "File > Exit" (Mac: "Firefox > Quit"; Linux: "File > Quit")

Thank You. Curse Ask!

Uninstalling the Ask toolbar worked for me too! Someone should have a word with them!!!

Completely uninstalling fixed the issue. disabling it did not work.

thank you so much. deleting the ask toolbar fixed our cpu

I do not have Ask addon. What other extensions could cause the problem?

I am only aware of the Ask toolbar causing this, to check for other problematic add-ons, use the method in this link - https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes

I disabled all the extensions however problem still exists: when I click a link in external application it opens in latest active tab but not in new. This is very annoying. Will try safe mode now.

This is definitely FF4 bug: same in safe mode.

Those settings do not apply to opening a link via an external program.

You can try Tab Mix Plus to see if that can redirect such an extrenal link to a new tab.

• Tab Mix Plus: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus/

I removed Tab Mix Plus as it is incompatible with FF4.0b11, does not work in it.

You can get a version of Tab Mix Plus that works with the Firefox 4 beta builds from http://tmp.garyr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10888

Thanks, that helped.

I had same problem started for no understandable reason. After reading these pages I looked for the Ask toolbar which I didn't even know was on my computer and to my surprise there it was but not selected, Don't know how it got there for sure so must have come packaged with some other download. Because it was not selected I doubted that it was the cause of my problem but after I uninstalled it everything was back to normal. I hate these utilities that load onto your computer uninvited by being attached to something you do want. to get rid of it go to :- Control panel>uninstall a program> choose ASK from the list>uninstall and I hope it works for you as it did for me.

Had it too...open Ask toolbar > and uninstall it> it then works. I always avoid installing tool bars, if I wanted it I'd have it installed. I like how they always try to install their tools. they slipped one by me