Computer freezing on certain websites

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I use Firefox 22.0 and sometimes I go to a site (often through a hyperlink) and it will minimize the browser and my computer freezes. The mouse turns into the blue circle and I cannot move the mouse. At the same time the light indicating my hard disk is being read blinks rapidly. It makes me paranoid that some program is busy copying files off my computer.

Does anyone get this?

I do not. It could be any number of problems and most likely not the websites themselves if this has occurred on several different ones. The first thing I would do is install AVG antivirus. It's a free antivirus that I have always found very good (but make sure to uninstall other antiviruses because they tend to clash). The next thing I would do is install Google Chrome. I do not specialize in tech support for browsers, but from vague recollection I remember that I originally switched to chrome because I was having similar problems with Firefox several years ago.

Don't panic, stuff like this is usually simply the result of a bugged profile. It's probably not a virus and there's no need to switch to chrome or anything.
You can likely fix the problem by:
1) Clicking the start button and entering "run"
2) In the dialog box enter: %APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\
3) You see a folder here, delete it. (careful, this means that firefox will be reset to its default state and all settings will be gone... perhaps make a backup copy somewhere first)
4) Start firefox again and it should create a new profile from scratch.

Umm, somewhat less destructively:
http://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tro ... -safe-mode