Firefox Web Site Certification Problems

My wife's laptop has been giving her FireFox browser problems off and on for about two weeks. Yesterday it was really annoying with 'pop-ups" although it is set to block pop-ups. So I did a virus scan of the C drive (current free AVG) and found nothing.

So then I did a "restore" on the FireFox browser mainly to get rid of Babylon and any other other crap that FireFox was burdened with. Its the reset thing where it puts the "old" information in a file on your desktop. Before you do the reset it tells you that it will retain bookmarks (it did) and cookies (don't think it did).

The result was that on certain bookmarked sites she would get the "This is not a recommended site (no certificate)." Sites like eBay, her online bank (Chase) etc. All sites that are bookmarked and that she visits practically every day.

Even thought FireFox said it was current (Version 26), I knew from checking my FireFox that the current version is 27. So I downloaded and installed the the current version on her machine. Didn't fix the problem.

I think that most of the sites that she got (no certificate) errors were also sites that identify her machine (specifically) and won't allow her to sign on because the machine ID is not available. I believe that is a cookie function.

Don't have a clue how FireFox decides that a site doesn't have a certificate. That function is obviously not working correctly. 100 % False Negatives.

Can anyone tell me how to "fix" it before I wander around and really screw things up.

Thanks for any help.

 

Thanks plodr, I'll get right on it.

Hope I can save this - my wife is threatening to drove the laptop out the window (no pun intended).

 

Sorry, didn't answer your question. Running Windows XP. Auto Update is selected, but (ah...the big but) I just checked and there are six optional (no critical) up-dates that haven't been applied. One mentions Certification.

So, I'm doing the six optional up-dates (est. 1 hour).