Firefox freezing on 64 bit box

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I have a new 64 bit HP desktop with Intel i7 technology, running Vista 64 Home Premium SP2. It came with Internet Explorer7, 32 and 64 bit versions. Well, I'm a Firefox fan, so I installed it thinking the box should run 32 bit apps. It did for a few minutes, then promptly froze the machine to the point of having to hold down the power button until the box turned off. No other way out; no combination of keystrokes or any other input device would work.

I mentioned this to a friend at work, and he said that he'd had a similar experience with his 64 bit laptop, but running 32 bit Vista. After uninstalling Firefox, he ended up doing a Regedit search for firefox, and deleted the entries, then went back to IE7 and that seemed to work for a while. He still has random problems with IE hanging up (the spinning "busy circle"), but he doesn't have to "jerk the plug out of the wall" to get back online, but a reboot is necessary. He updated to IE8 and that seemed to work for a while, but it didn't last.

I did the same thing on my 64 bit box, and am having the same results. I also did a clean up with Ccleaner, but apparently there is something else going on. I'm thinking that I will probably have to re-install windows and do the updates over again. Has any one heard of this? I thought I was "future proofing" myself by getting 64 bit, but I may have "present proofed" myself for a while!

I have subsequently read where Mozilla has no plans to support 64 bit at least until version 4.0 is out. I have also read that some have been running Firefox on 64 bit machines with no problem. I don't know what the real story is.

Thanks for reading.
 
I know quite a few people who have had trouble with their browser addons causing stability issues in vista 64. ( AVG in particular)

Try running your browser with add ons disabled.

I did run firefox on this setup (vista 64) for a couple of weeks with no problems, but prefer internet explorer.
 
Well, I made a set of system restore DVD's for the machine, used them to re-format the windows partition and re-installed the OS, started running IE8 32 bit (no flash available for the 64 bit IE yet) and though I was out of the woods, but alas, I'm back to the spinning "busy" circle after browsing for a while. I though the re-install would get everything back to factory settings. Now I really am at a loss. The only option I can think of now is to install Win7 x64 RC and see if that will work. After that, I may have to take the box in for warranty service. Any other ideas?
 
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