When I go to a torrent site and try to download a torrent file

my internet traffic just dies and the browser, FireFox, locks up and has to be killed and restarted

This only started today.

No new addons, but I did have the bookmark problem earlier this week.

I don't think it is my ISP as it happens the same, if running barefoot, or via my VPN

It is also independent of the torrent site, UKNova, TheEmpire etc

I backed out of FF 12 to 11, but that did not help.

I think I may have to load the browser from scratch, unless anyone has other ideas??

Thanks

Nothing should have happened unless you installed what you were downloading, send me the link I'll try it, was it a movie?

It was a .torrent file to be opened by uTorrent.

I tried a System Restore, but that did not work as a files could not be accessed..............

I disabled my anti-virus as suggested.

Then I uninstalled FF

Re-installed it and used my Mozbackup file to get back to a working state

and now all appears to be normal

All very worrying, but resolved.

I use the superior IE so maybe not the same problem as yours but sometimes when the browser appears to lock up it's because uTorrent is grabbing all the bandwidth.

At the lower uTorrent window with the various options set it to "Speed - Upload & Download - 1 Second" this will show the speeds in real time.

If my browsing is slow sometimes because uTorrent is using all the bandwidth I restrict the download speed or temporally stop uTorrent altogether.

No I had not got to the stage of uTorrent downloading anything.

I was just retrieving the torrent file from the tracker.

It looks like FF was corrupted, as the re-install seems to have cured the problem