Hello Jerry.

It's possible that you are having a problem with some Firefox add-on that is hindering your Firefox's normal behavior. Have you tried disabling all add-ons (just to check), to see if Firefox goes back to normal?

Whenever you have a problem with Firefox, whatever it is, you should make sure it's not caused by one (or more than one) of your installed add-ons, be it an extension, a theme or a plugin. To do that easily and cleanly, run Firefox in safe mode (don't forget to select Disable all add-ons when you start safe mode). If the problem disappears, you know it's from an add-on. Disable them all in normal mode, and enable them one at a time until you find the source of the problem. See this article for information about troubleshooting extensions and theme and this one for plugins.

If you need support for one of your add-ons, you'll have to contact its author.

Or maybe it's malware. To scan for malware, install, update and run these programs in this order. They are all free for personal use, but some have limited functionality in their "free mode", but the features you'll miss are not really needed to find and remove the problem you have. Remember that not all programs detect the same malware!

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware - malwarebytes.org/mbam.php SuperAntispyware - superantispyware.com AdAware - lavasoftusa.com/software/adaware Spybot Search & Destroy - safer-networking.org/en/index.html Windows Defender - microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx Dr. Web Cureit - freedrweb.com/cureit

If these don't find it or can't clear it, please tell me and I'll provide you with further assistance.

Morbus~ thanks for the reply.

I stumbled upon the solution by chance. Here is what I did.

I started in safe mode as you suggested and selected "disabled all add-ons", and the problem disappeared. Then I restarted in normal, disabled all addons and restarted. The problem was still there. I followed the link instructions for troubleshooting extensions and themes, and also the one for plugins. The problem was still there.

I do have Malwarebytes installed and I ran that before asking for help. No infections there, but I will download the other programs for future use.

So, here is the deal. I have a DellTouch keyboard and normally open Firefox by pushing the "home" button on the keyboard. (like I did with IE previously) But for whatever reason I decided to try opening Firefox from the start menu. The problem disappeared. I went into the control panel and checked the keyboard configuration and found the problem. I had to configured the "home" button to launch Firefox. Once that was done, the problem disappeared.

All is well. Thanks again.