Sometimes a problem with Firefox may be a result of malware installed on your computer, that you may not be aware of.

You can try these free programs to scan for malware, which work with your existing antivirus software:

• Microsoft Safety Scanner
• MalwareBytes' Anti-Malware
• TDSSKiller - AntiRootkit Utility
• Hitman Pro
• ESET Online Scanner

Microsoft Security Essentials is a good permanent antivirus for Windows 7/Vista/XP if you don't already have one.

Further information can be found in the Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware article.

Did this fix your problems? Please report back soon.

could you go to firefox > help > troubleshooting information, copy the contents of that page and paste them here into a reply on the forum? this might give us a clue what is going on...

When I click on the recommended update I get into the following link: http://downloadally.com/a/update/browser?cpx_browsersafeguard&source=cpx_browsersafeguard-browser-display-US&adprovider=CPX1&subid=9192241&subid2=170839&c1=lax1CKyV1d3chZiIRBACGJfomNfXp6GuXCINOTguMTQ1LjY0LjE0MSgB

Is this a legitimate Firefox update ?

this is a scam tactic that is trying to trick you into installing malware, so don't download or execute this kind of stuff! only download firefox from its official location at mozilla.org - in addition updates are handled automatically by firefox so you don't have to download anything (you can initiate a check for updates in firefox > help > about firefox).

you might also want to run a full scan of your system with the security software already in place and different tools like the free version of malwarebytes, adwcleaner & kaspersky security scan in order to make sure that there isn't already some sort of malware active on your system that triggers these false alerts.

Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware

Thanks for the info.

I had another problem with "Whilokii pop ups". I uninstalled Whilokii, I ran AdwCleaner and two other "cleaners" and it still was there. Then I found almost by accident that Whilokii had installed itself as an add-on in the Firefox browser. I got rid of it.

Why are these pop-ups not being blocked by the pop-up blocker?

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked

Thanks, Edmeister.

Since so many pages use Javascript, disabling Javascript is not really a viable option. Would it be possible to specifically disable the ability for Javascript to open another window? Or, better yet, to allow this if and only if the operation was immediately preceded by a user action (button click, keypress, etc.)? This would still allow for pages that use Javascript to open up a secondary interface (like a login window), but not to just willy-nilly open advertisements and other spam/scam content.