FWIW, I didn't really pay too much attention to the aesthetic changes, since I realized immediately that the lack of compatibility with many of my 20 or so add-ons would make upgrading at this time more pain than gain. But in my case I already have done some customizing of the look with FF3: Tabs on Top (I guess I was way ahead of FF4 with that one ;-). When using Iron/Chrome I liked that compact feeling and tried to imitate it, using also the add-ons below:) Tiny Menu Hide GUI Bars (hides, among other things, the status bar, making it a pop-up at the bottom left that display only when needed) Hide Caption Title Bar (The title bar in any browser has always seemed like a big waste of space to me.) As I say, I didn't look too closely at the new look of FF4, so it's possible that some of these add-ons are incompatible precisely because they are no longer necessary. (Like the hidden status bar ? Does it pop-up on FF4 when needed ? Or maybe show in the address bar as in Opera ?) But others of my add-ons (Favicon Picker, Text Link, and some others) are also incompatible. Perhaps their functionality has also been incorporated into the default behaviour of FF 4 as well. Or not. Maybe I'll get brave enough to try upgrading again next week. For now it's a waiting game..... As the OP, I appreciate the continued comments. Thanks ! :-)

Zep, thank you so much for all you time and advise. I truly appreciate it. Can I ask you about the log I posted at 14:41 particularly the double entries? Acrobat.com Acrobat.com Ad-Aware Ad-Aware Adobe AIR Adobe AIR Corel Painter Photo Essentials 4 Corel Painter Photo Essentials 4 CyberLink DVD Suite CyberLink DVD Suite Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer HP MediaSmart TV HP MediaSmart TV HP MediaSmart Webcam HP MediaSmart Webcam LabelPrint LabelPrint etc? Why are there doubles? I have to log off for the night, but if you have any more suggestions I will check back tomorrow. Thanks again. Carol

Hmm, I had not read the whole MS page but basically you only need to follow the first 2 instructions. I have never had to use those other instructions myself. Remember that if you get flustered just click the Cancel button to get out of where you are. There is nothing to be afraid of when using System File Checker. You It simply goes through your computer checking all the operating system files and replaces those which are corrupt or missing. The need for the CD is so it can get the needed files to install for you. The slight downside is that it takes the computer back to when your particular CD was created which means you will be behind on security updates and possibly a service pack. No big deal there either, you simply go to the windows update site and the computer grabs whatever it needs. You are doing nothing wrong. Who knows why those files went missing. Perhaps/probably it was due to the power outage. You can of course extract and install each of those files if you wish to avoid using SFC. Follow the instructions here to do that for each file. You do not have to do them all at one time. Try one, see how it goes then do others as you feel up to the task.

I had the same thing happen with the latest version of the Sea Monkey Browser. I would get a spinning circle and the screen would get a white washed look but could still see the items on screen, couldn't scroll up or down or side to side.. This would happen 4-5 times in a 15 minute period. It didn't matter if I was reading online newspaper, or email. The freezing would happen and would last for several minutes. In order to fix the problem , I had to delete the default user profile and then create a new default profile.