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 themes and this one for plugins.

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

If the problem does not disappear when all add-ons are disabled, please tell me, so we can work from there. Please have no fear of following my instructions to the line, as all can be easily undone.

Your plugins list shows outdated plugin(s) with known security and stability risks.

• Shockwave Flash 10.1 r53
• Java Plug-in 1.6.0_13 for Netscape Navigator (DLL Helper)

Update the Java plugin to the latest version.

• http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp (Java Platform: Download JRE)

Update the Flash plugin to the latest version.

• http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/

Make sure that your security software (anti-virus, firewall) is configured properly

You can also do a malware check with a few malware scan programs.
You need to use all programs because each detects different malware.
Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of the database.

• http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware
• http://www.superantispyware.com/ - SuperAntispyware
• http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Spybot Search & Destroy
• http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php - Ad-Aware Free
• http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx - Windows Defender: Home Page

See also "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked and What to do when searches take you to the wrong search website

Thanks for your help & sorry for the delay in coming back to you. I've been on holiday & away from computers. Isn't it heaven? Back now though & disabled all plug-ins but behaviour is exactly the same.