Secure Connection Failed

[Clueless in Seattle]

I'm running Firefox 100.0 under Windows 10 21H2 on an old refurbished Dell Latitude 3330 laptop.

When I booted up the laptop this morning Firefox was virtually frozen; "not responding" appeared in the title bar at the top of the Firefox window.

Task Manager reported a CPU usage of 100 % with Firefox taking 48% of that, and Kaspersky Lab Launcher taking a similar amount.

I tried manually closing all of my usual tabs in Firefox but even then all that Firefox would show on the single remaining tab was this error message:

Secure Connection Failed by Will Anderson, on Flickr

I tried running MS Edge but got the same error message.

And when I try to download email messages to Thunderbird I get errors like this: "Connection to server pop3.live.com was reset."

Last night when I shut down the laptop, I was presented with a warning that Microsoft .NET framework was preventing shutdown. I recalled having seen that warning frequently in earlier versions of Windows, so I just clicked "Shutdown anyway" as I had always done in the past. But now I'm wondering if that could have been what caused this problem.

I looked at the Kaspersky settings and found a warning that "Some protection components are disabled. We recommend you reinstall the application." But I can't figure out how to reinstall it when I can't access the Internet.

Interestingly, I'm

[DanRaisch]

Have you tried powering off or unplugging the router or gateway and then restarting it after about 15 seconds?

[tanstaafl]

I assume one device works, and its just your refurbished laptop that has problems.

Try clearing your browser cache, uninstalling Kaspersky, and then rebooting your laptop into "safe mode with networking". That will use generic drivers, and disable optional software such as Kaspersky. Then download a fresh copy of Kaspersky, reboot back into normal mode and re-install it.

If that doesn't help you could try rolling back to your most recent restore point.

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... e5e56fe234 (safe mode)

https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/win ... 6777ecd14e (system restore)

[Clueless in Seattle]

Thanks a million, tanstaafl! I followed your instructioins and "Bingo!" here I am again typing this post on my laptop. Both Firefox and Thunderbird are able to access the web again!

One minor glitch is that all my (way too many) tabs have disappeared from Firefox. Maybe that's a good thing. But I'm wondering anyway if there's a trick to restoring them.

But my history and bookmarks all seem to have survived intact. So losing the tabs is inconsequential. Would a profile backup have saved the tabs?

Anyway, my clunky old laptop seems to be back up and running again, thanks to your advice, tanstaafl! You made my day!

P.S. to Dan: Thanks for the reminder to unplug, wait, and then plug the modem back in again. That's an old drill I used to have to resort to a long while ago, back when my Internet connection would become sluggish every two or three days. Didn't have to try it this time though. Just ran Ookla and my download speed is 119.56 Mbps. I really appreciate the volunteer work you guys do to help us tech challenged senior citizens who are trying to keep up with the rest of the world.