Web Browsing at a crawl, what is happening?

[wdcbooks]

I am only moderately computer literate, but I keep my software up to date and I use Firefox. I am running Windows XP on an Inspiron 9300.

Yesterday I saw a "Click here to Download Firefox (new version)" here. I think it was 2.0, but it was whichever one you would download on mozilla.com. I went through the process and shut down. Since then I have just been crawling when I want to load a page. It doesn't matter what site I am on.

The more complex pages just run forever, but it takes a least a minute to run even a plain text page. This is true with both Firefox and Explorer, but IE is a bit better. It is not my wireless connection. My wife's computer and my other laptop all run fine. I have deleted unneeded programs and cleaned up my temporary files, but I knew that wouldn't really do anything. Would anyone care to hazard a guess as to what is happening? For what its worth, Full Tilt is actually running better than usual.

[BiPolar_Nut]

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Yesterday I saw a "Click here to Download Firefox (new version)"

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There was recently an upgrade to 2.0.1. I'm having a brainfart as to what exactly the upgrade notification looks like. First think thaqt came in to my paranoid mind was you may have been coaxed into downloading a trojan'd version from a malicious site (possibly using an XSS vulnerability making it appear you were on mozilla.com when you really weren't).

Run your antivirus and anti-spyware programs (which are what, by the way?) and see if anything turns up. I may be over reacting, but I had no problems with the last several FF updates back to about 1.5 to 1.6 which just trashed my profile. FF has gotten better and better...fewer cookie problems, WAY fewer mem leaks....quick security fixes, it's coming along nicely [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. Other than being tricked into downloading a trojan'd version, I'm not sure what else to suggest (although it is entirely possible you haven't been compromised and this is some other issue). Have you tried uninstalling and reinstalling from a fresh download? Still run the AV/spyware scans tho.

[wdcbooks]

Ok,it is fixed. I can't say quite how, but I uninstalled Firefox 2 and reinstalled and all my problems are gone. I downloaded the original directly off mozilla.com, so I would assume I didn't get a trojan.

Just glad to be working again.

[BiPolar_Nut]

good...could have just been one corrupt dll or something that was replaced during the reinstall.