I simply want to acknowledge that I resolved the situation about which I posed a question to Mozilla support yesterday. I neglected to mention that I had already tried all the seemingly straightforward methods suggested in answers received to the question. I was finally able to restore download capability by undoing the change that was made to the TEMP & TMP variables, environmental variables under system information, that was done when my daughter followed instructions in her C++ class. We share laptops, and I did not know that the computer was being modified at the system level to possible the installation of the g++ compiler and its use.

I deleted the 'extra' from the path: C:\Documents and Settings\Customer\Local Settings\Temp;C:\Temp, the extra C:\Temp and downloading capability was restored. Thank all for attention to the question and the time taken to offer helpful advice, Comfuddled