First, try doing what the first poster suggested and disable all the add ons. If you're running a lot of add ons it could slow down the browser considerably. Remember the saying "garbage in garbage out" You pile a lot of extras on your browser and it will just take that much more time to load. Try Chrome. It has just about everything FF has and it is definitely faster. Even IE has come a long way and made their browser more favorable to the masses. As for hijacks and malware slowing you down, I would recommend MalwareBytes AntiMalware Free and run a full scan. If you have trouble it will more than likely find it. Out of the 3 main browsers, I would say FF is the slowest. Try and remember that your computer is only going to be as fast as the hardware installed on it. Do you have a fast processor? Do you have enough RAM installed?