Boot the computer in Windows Safe Mode with network support (press F8 on the boot screen) as a test. *http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-start-windows-in-safe-mode/

Thanks for responding. Although I booted up in "Safe Mode with network support," I still had no connection to the internet. I see that other users have reported this same problem. In any event, it prevents me from testing out Firefox in safe mode. Any other suggestions?

See: *http://kb.mozillazine.org/Error_loading_websites Do a malware check with several malware scanning programs on the Windows computer. Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware. All these programs have free versions. Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan. *Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware:<br>http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php *AdwCleaner:<br>http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/<br>http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Removal-Tools/AdwCleaner.shtml *SuperAntispyware:<br>http://www.superantispyware.com/ *Microsoft Safety Scanner:<br>http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx *Windows Defender:<br>http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/using-defender *Spybot Search & Destroy:<br>http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html *Kasperky Free Security Scan:<br>http://www.kaspersky.com/security-scan You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller. *Anti-rootkit utility TDSSKiller:<br>http://support.kaspersky.com/5350?el=88446 See also: *"Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked *https://support.mozilla.org/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-caused-malware

No offense, Cor-el, but this sounds like just thrashing around with generic tips. What are the chances that malware hit at exactly the same moment as a Firefox update?