Some conflicts could have developed with updates of Firefox, extensions and plug-ins. I would try disabling your third party toolbars for a start and make sure your plug-ins such as Flash are up-to-date.

Then you should work your way through this(Safe Mode, Problematic extensions etc) -

https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Troubleshooting%20extensions%20and%20themes

If you see their welcome pages then see these articles for some suggestions:

• Firefox has just updated tab shows each time you start Firefox
• How to set the home page - Firefox supports multiple home pages separated by '|' symbols

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Preferences_not_saved

that is exactly what is going on cor-el. the welcome pages for those three add ons come up every time firefox is restarted. i will look into the links you posted. i am still not ruling out what alan said as well, as i haven't had time to do much troubleshooting of my addons. i did try uninstalling those add ons and reinstalling them, but that didn't work. i appreciate the insight of you both and i will continue to try resolving this. thanx

sorry it took me so long to respond, but i did solve my problem. i came to the conclusion that something in my profile had become corrupted causing the mentioned add ons to reshow their installed tab each time on restart. eventually, NoScript stopped showing it, but it was still not working properly as i would have to re-allow permissions for regularly visited web pages. i did a complete uninstall, including deleting profile, and reinstall with a backup of my profile before the corruption occurred. i can't help but feel like maybe Firefox 4 had something to do with this, as at the time this occurred, version 4 had been installed soon before this happened, and i have never had an issue with firefox like this before. sure, i've had add on problems. who hasn't. but i have never had an issue where i had to turn to asking about it here. this is my first time. IMO, this new faster release schedule being implemented is a bad idea all around for Firefox, especially in the add on department. i feel like with the old schedule, it was hard enough for add on devs to keep up with the major revisions to keep their add ons up to date for the new version. with a faster release schedule, i am guessing that it is going to become more prevalent that add ons will become obsolete for newer versions of the browser, which can be a hassle when you want to use the newer version of firefox, but because add ons you are used to aren't available for the newer version, i tend to stay with the older version. currently i am sticking with the last non beta release of version 3 because not only did it work fine for me, but there were several useful add ons i used in 3 that don't work in 4 or 5. don't get me wrong, 4 and 5 are nice in their ways, but for me, firefox is all about the add ons. that is what makes it my favorite browser, and updating to the latest version is not worth it for me if i can't keep my add ons in it. so i say nay to this new policy of faster version releases. Firefox is already the best. why ruin it?