Contact Norton about that problem. The plugin-container was updated in Firefox 3.6.15 (just released today) and sounds like Norton needs to patch their detection script to recognize the new executable.

Thank you for the reply, but it wasn't helpful because Firefox continues to freeze and crash. I have never had this problem with firefox until the 3.6.15 update. Further, other people have posted about having the same problems. These people were also alerted by their antivirus software. If you really want to help me, then you should contact Norton about that problem. Then, you can come back and post the information that you received from them.

I am getting the same problem as well. All I did was clicked on my Firefox icon as normal and there began some updates and I receive the same error everyone else is getting. When I try to login my gmail account the browser freezes. When I open up a couple tabs my browser freezes.

I initially got the same Norton error prompt as mentioned. I need to use firefox but have been unable to for the past 12 hours.

Norton did not flag this file as a problem whenI installed it. I have since (only a few minutes ago) updated my Norton info, and then scanned the file again,

• yes Norton is reporting it is used by few (less than 50) from of its own community
• but Norton is reporting the file as 'trusted' and 'good'. I have myself flagged it as trusted, so that will be one more positive report for the file.

I think this is normal activity from Norton. Norton is not reporting the file is in any way suspicious, only that it is a new file.

I am not getting problems with firefox crashing, I am using two XP 32 bit systems both with firefox 3.6.15 & 4 beta12 installed.

I have contacted Norton and have an analyst diagnosing the problem on my computer as I speak. He just told me that the problem is not with Norton but with Firefox.

He has run tests, turn off Norton, uninstalled, and reinstalled Norton and I still have the same problems. When I go to certain sites like gmail the browser crashes. He told me that the problem does not lie with Norton.

Any problem with Norton was apparently that they may have been slightly slower than normal in confirming the files were safe and genuine.

Possibly an important fact is that presumably many users have no problem with the updates; so some troubleshooting is going to be required to identify in exactly what circumstances the problems occur. So what combinations of OS and other software are causing these problems. (Reports could conceivably be unconnected problems occurring by coincidence)

For what it's worth, Windows Task Manager shows two Firefoxes running at the time it stops responding. Am reasonbly shure only one browser window had Gmail, but as the attached MWSnap screen shot shows, Win XP SP2 thinks two windows (tabs?) have Gmail.

AM posting this via IE. After my last post, I started Firefox 3.6.15 in safe mode. It said approx. "This is embarressing cannot restore -- try unchecking a tab". I unchecked Gmail and it came up OK. New Tab. Alt-d. Typed in amaz and an old amazon.com URL came up, as I wanted. Chose it. Page came up, mostly. Didn't give me the cursor on the search box as usual, so I clicked on the box. Pointer became an hour glass. After counting to 10 slowly, I went and brushed my teeth. Came back. Cursor still an hour glass.

Windows Task Manager shows two Amazon.com in Firefox tasks, both have status "Not Responding".

Remembering another copy of Firefox was running under another user on this PC, I switched to that user and Alt-F4'd it. CPU went to 100% for 60 or 65 seconds, then the task ended. I declined the offer to send a report to MSoft.

Switching back to my logon, Firefox is still there, still not responding, throbber not moving.

Back when Norton said plugincontainer was suspicious, I said to not allow it.

Looking at my system, I see I'm on SP3, not SP2 as previously reported. (oops). Image of Sys Specs attached.

Got it fixed. Uninstalled Firefox. Downloaded it again. Problem gone. Very nice that the default on uninstall is to leave one's bookmarks in place. They show up on the re-install.

Norton 360 did not ask me about the plugin-container this time.

Not sure what exactly but something odd could be going on between Norton and Firefox 3.6.15 Norton (I use NIS not360) is still through its 'File Insight' telling me less that 50 of its community members use firefox 3.6.15. Compare results for Firefox 4beta12 that inform me that it has been out less than 10 days but used by 10s of thousands of (Norton) community members.

It's not just Norton's guys... 3.6.15 and 4.0b12 doesn't play well with PCTools either.

"Is 3.6.15 safe"?

well, probably... for me it's so damn safe that I had to beat it with a hammer in order to get it to open.

A lot of anti-virus software as moved on from the brute force approach of matching code strings - bit for bit. These daze they prefer to detect how various applications behave. They detect behavioral anomalies. As it turns out, these anomalies are common to a lot of the code in the MS operating systems. So, now they have to list a lot of exceptions to keep the anomaly detector from killing off essential code.

I'm guessing that a lot of this has to do with FF behaving more like a virus than an app. The antivirus world hasn't written in all the exceptions, yet.