What happens when you try to download? Is there a specific error message?

Besides the small stub installer, you have the option to download a full installer (pick your own language). That would be on this page:

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/all/#product-desktop-release

Does that work any better?

Thank you for your suggestion. The original event took place yesterday morning. When I attempt to use firefox I get a blank screen. Nothing in the header to indicate a website. I then tried to download a new version. I can’t. I have a second laptop in the house, on the same network, that is not affected. I’m stumped.

So Firefox installed, but won't load any pages? There are a few possible reasons for that:

(1) Firewall rules

Could you take a look at this article: Firefox can't load websites but other browsers can

(2) Conflict with certain security software

I'm not sure whether there are any currently known conflicts, but in the past programs with an "Anti-Exploit" feature would try to inject protective code into Firefox processes which caused a deadlock.

(3) Missing VC Runtime files

If the address bar is inoperable, this could be the issue. The solution is to reinstall the shared VC Runtime files from:

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/topic/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads-2647da03-1eea-4433-9aff-95f26a218cc0

When this happened to me, I downloaded and ran both the 32-bit and 64-bit installers in the first section of that article ("Visual Studio 2015, 2017 and 2019"). Then I restarted Windows and all was normal again.

I don't know whether 64-bit users need the 32-bit install, but Windows didn't object when I ran it (I ran the 32-bit first, then 64-bit second).

You can check for issues caused by a corrupted or incomplete Visual C++ installation that is missing runtime components (Redistributable Packages) required by Firefox, especially VCRUNTIME140_1.dll.

See "Visual Studio 2015, 2017 and 2019":

• https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/2977003/the-latest-supported-visual-c-downloads