I feel i should say: I DO want to reinstall firefox. But the question is: has firefox fixed this problem yet ?

What is the malware that you've encountered?

Are you installing from the official page? https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/fx/#desktop

By the way, I suggest not reinstalling Firefox until we can consider the above information.

If you can't resist temptation, FIRST quarantine your earlier settings folder by going to the following folder and renaming it:

%APPDATA%\Mozilla\

Rename the Firefox folder to OldFirefox. The next time you install Firefox, you will have a fresh settings folder and we can import bookmarks after that.

jscher2000 yes. And specifically (this was fall 2011 - spring 2012) .. I have to say I am short on specifics of the malware that I removed. 2 trojans (possibly DDOS software..?), 3 adbars and many many many many trackers(kinda normal these days). And yes, I know how to read a URL correctly, silly. Phishing is a common problem. When I said scrub my registry, i mean run-->regedit---> HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT etc. and so on and so forth. Alongside running adaware, spybot S&D as well as AVG (eventually). And yes, I did check to make sure my computer is plugged in. I do alot of gaming on public servers and even hosted from this machine for a time, so alot of people have had my computer particulars. My router is linux based to improve firewall security. Very effective against port sniffers. I discovered the problem watching my network traffic spike when my computer was idle for a few minutes, then , sitting down noticed my CPU running full load, then as soon as I would touch the machine, everything would drop to normal. I fixed the problem, then noticed through trial and elimination that 1 piece of software would seem to reinstall upon launching firefox, then if i restarted , I would have an adbar, 2 restarts, adbars on other browsers, etc. The only thing that seemed to prevent the reinstallation with any permanancy was uninstalling firefox. I did find this article http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2009/05/microsoft_update_quietly_insta.html It's old, but strangely reminiscent of my problem.. which apparently is a particular windows update labeled as a .NET framework assistant update (not a windows fan, but some of the software I have to run requires windows, so I don't have a lot of choice, I don't like dual boot/virtual machines, etc). >>>>>>>So, like I said, this is NOT a diagnosis issue.<<<<< I tried to email mozilla directly, but apparently, this is the only way I am allowed to ask a question. The question is, again: has firefox been able to fix this security problem?

Just clarifying , I have not run firefox in about a year. I just removed it from a family members computer a few months ago as well, due to the similar issues. The 65 year old user is very happy with Opera and reports no security breaches since.

Firefox has made some changes to make it more difficult to inject add-ons without your knowledge, but bad add-ons still exist and people install them every day from a wide variety of sources. Since we don't know which one you had, it's impossible to say whether you might pick it up again. Obviously you are security conscious and would take it one step at a time if you do try Firefox again, monitor for unexpected add-ons, and take all the right precautions.

Thank you for the prompt response =)

If we are talking about trojans, I would guess the trojans install due to old JAVA or Flash version existing on your system rather than Firefox. Chrome uses their own versions of the software rather than system - wide installs. And IE add-ons are far less safe than chrome and FF ones.