In the morning, after getting home from work, my immediate schedule is something akin to; walking the dogs (assuming one of the slaves aren’t available), a bite to eat (the dogs and myself), a cup of tea (aaaahhhhh), maybe watch something on TV that I’ve either recorded or got on dvd (Battlestar Galactica series 2 just recently), and then a brief breeze around the internet before a shower and bed.
Wednesday was such a day, only when I got up several hours later (another cup of tea and brief browse around the internet, before the ironing and dinner making) I found that the browsing was off due to Firefox hanging 10/15 seconds or so after firing up. I shut it down and tried again; same thing.
Now I must confess, my immediate reaction was one of what’s that daughter of mine done now – she won’t openly admit it, but she does have something of a reputation for placing spanners in the works. After asking, however, it was plainly evident that in this instance she’d done nothing out of the ordinary, (neither does she in fact use Firefox for her browsing). Somewhat mystified I tried Firefox again; same thing. No option then other than to be a little more radical in my approach.
Since yesterday then I have:
- Checked all the firewall/antivirus/malware/spyware settings – and found nothing untoward.
- Tried uninstalling and reinstalling two different versions – several times (even to the extent of manually cleaning out the registry of anything to do with Mozilla).
- Tried different restore points. (N.B. I run XP Professional).
- I’ve even tried shutting down United Devices.
Nothing appears to work. Here, however, is the rub.
During the course of all the above I once again found myself back on my daughters login. Though she uses IE for her browsing, there is a Firefox shortcut on her desktop, so I tried it. Yes, you’ve guessed it Firefox fires up perfectly okay on her login, and I’ve also since found that that it will fire up okay on the son’s and wife’s as well.
So what’s to do? I’m no computer guru and as such I’m not ashamed to say I’m completely baffled. I was just wondering if anyone can suggest something I’ve not thought of or tried.
David
