Computer help forum: firefox won't load!

for some unknown reason, firefox won't load when i booted up my laptop today. it seems to be running in the background, but the web browsing window does not show up. i don't know if it's just taking extra long to load, but i waited quite a while and it still wasn't doing anything. it checked task manager and firefox didn't show up in the applications tab, but it was in the processes tab. i tried restarting, and the same problem occurs. i tried a cold boot, and no dice. finally, downloaded firefox 2.0 (i was running firefox 1.5) and installed it in the hopes that it will fix the problem. now it seems the problem has been compounded because my machine saw two installations of firefox in my "add/remove programs" list in the control panel. i uninstalled firefox 1.5 (at this point a pop-up window showed up saying i have to shut down firefox before uninstall can continue, but there was on firefox window anywhere in sight). i rebooted, and still firefox 2.0 was on my laptop. i tried to uninstalled firefox 2.0 as well, but somehow the uninstaller doesn't run!!! HELP!!! i am now suffering from a splitting headache trying to fix this problem. i never had any problem with firefox before.

the last time i was able to run firefox was yesterday morning. nothing fishy then. in the evening, i resumed my computer - it was on sleep/hibernate mode - and it so happened that my network was down. firefox ran, but the pages can't be loaded. so i shut down my computer, and called it a day. then today the problems showed up.

i also restored my system to a restore point made two days ago, and that didn't solve the problem, either. i still have a firefox icon on my desktop, although firefox is no longer on my "add/remove programs" list in control panel. firefox is still on my program files, though.

somewhere in between i also tried running firefox in safe mode, but still nothing happened.

now all i really want is to weed out everything related to firefox in my computer, so that it won't experience any software conflicts or what not when i install firefox 2.0 (again!) i pretty much gave up the hope of retrieving all my bookmarks and cookies since i uninstalled firefox 1.5 (twice) already.

i am running windows xp home on my thinkpad t43.

please save my computer!!!