The last couple of weeks I've been getting progressively worse problems with Firefox all of a sudden becoming unable to connect to anything. There would still be a process for it running and Vista would NOT end the process or the process tree for it. Also, the machine wouldn't reset through the menu because of that Firefox still running. I'd have to go over and hit the reset button.
The last couple of days it's gotten really bad. So I started searching around for others having the issue. I finally tracked down some message board threads that had narrowed it down to the latest version of Zonealarm. As of a few minutes ago, I've uninstalled it and I'll see now if I get the same issue. I had even uninstalled Firefox and tried using IE (ugh, I weep for those still using that piece of poop) but that started having the same issues.
The only other thing I've seen suggested is that it could be malware. However several AV programs were listed that would find it, I downloaded one of them, and it found nothing.
So if this is happening to you and you have ZA, try removing that first.
