If Firefox is open, you can restart in Firefox Troubleshoot Mode from the Help menu: Click the menu button. , click Help, select Troubleshoot Mode and click Restart in the "Restart Firefox in Troubleshoot Mode?" dialog that opens.

Regards, James

Thanks for the suggestion. Unfortunately, after loading Troubleshoot Mode I first opened Google and it immediately froze.

What's weird with the freeze is that it's not like usual program freezing, where it isn't responding; typically, a program that freezes will be identified as "not responding" in Task Manager and if you interact with it the window will turn grey. In this situation, it appears to be fully active but is entirely unaffected by any interaction, the page that is open does not advance, and even Windows believes it to be operating normally. The loading icon on the tab will remain active. Right-clicking on it in Task Bar also fails to allow interaction during this state.

After the latest update, the problem remains. It doesn't look like an add-on issue...

Yeah, it's not an add-on issue, I've been having the issue since 102. Next time it stops working, look in the task manager and see if Edge is running. Most of time when Firefox freezes for me in Windows I see Edge in the task manager. Looks like it starts automagically, but after killing the Edge process Firefox works. Just a wee bit of a conspiracy theory, but give it a try.  ;-)

Also, I would recommend running another version of Firefox (Beta, Dev, or Nightly). When the current version stops working for me, I just open Dev and wait for the current version to come back to life. Sometimes it takes 4 to 5mins.

Not a bad suggestion, but it can't be Edge. I made certain that was constantly shut down when I first got my PC. No amount of waiting has made a difference for my issue. Only killing Firefox and the reopening. Testing around, it does seem to be tied to the Google search engine for some reason, as that is where it most consistently freezes.

Well, cripes. So, I finally decided to just back up my tabs as bookmarks and do a Refresh. Problem persisted. So I did a total reinstall (with all the frustrations of restoring non-synchable details). Suddenly, the problem is gone!

But, I seem to have found the problem as well. After returning to Google, I noticed the pop-up for Google requesting location permissions. Of course I enabled it, as it is quite useful for me. And... it freezes. I kill and relaunch Firefox, hop into settings and remove that permission and return to Google... no freeze!

So, whatever the problem is, it is, at least in part, somehow tied to the Location Permissions, if not specifically to that permission with Google.

So, now I really hope that this post gets noticed and the issue can be addressed. Thanks for the advice along the way!