Firefox holds a special place in my heart. I've used it for years, blissfully happy since day one. I've told all my friends about it, lobbied for it among the IE crowd, and sneakily installed it on any computer I was left alone with for more than 5 minutes. So, why, oh why, has Firefox turned against me?!

A few days ago I noticed that funny things were happening on my computer. Gmail displayed the dreaded 'still working' message and Facebook photos went crazy. I checked my Internet connection, logged out and logged in. I even restarted my computer, the fail-safe to solution to everything! Nothing worked and, for the first time ever, I had a sneaking suspicion that my beloved Firefox was at fault. It was time to find out what you can do when Firefox 3.5 goes bad...

Clear your history

Not a revolutionary idea, but once it was mentioned, I realized I hadn't done it (or checked the settings) since upgrading to 3.5. Go to Tools > Clear Recent History and choose 'Everything' from the drop down menu.

Erase the cache

When you clear the history, make sure you're including the cache: in the 'Clear Recent History' option, click on 'Details' and make sure 'Cache' is marked.

Update to the latest version

Make sure you have updated Firefox 3.5 to 3.5.1. Technically this patch was security related, but it also included a fix for "an issue that was making Firefox take a long time to load on some Windows systems".

Try Safe Mode

Still having problems? Run Firefox in Safe Mode. If the browser speeds up, it might be time to...

Examine your add-ons

Now, I like a cool add-on as much as the next girl, but they might be at fault. Do a quick test - disable all of them and see if there is an improvement. If there is, try adding them back on one by one, and see if any slow Firefox down. If one (or all) do, you'll have to do without or find a more compatible alternative.

In my case, one of my many add-ons was indeed the culprit. It wasn't even one of my favorites, so I am going to do without. Hopefully any problems you've been having can be sorted out by one of the basic steps above. If it hasn't, let us know and we'll bring out the heavy artillery in the battle to speed up Firefox!