General :: Internet Timeout Issues After Resetting Password - Or A Heck Of A Coincidence

Owned linux laptop (running UBUNTU) for 1.5 yrs. Love it. No problems... until:

1. I changed my password, via System - Admin - User & Groups - Properties. (I just typed 2 characters on the end of the old User Password and the Confirmation password and OK'd it all.
2. Shut down laptop. Upon restarting it (only minutes later), neither the new pw or the old one worked.
3. Googled for help on another machine. Booted linux laptop up in recovery mode and used the passwd <?> command to reset pw (back to the original one!).
4. Shut down. Started laptop up again... forever more firefox runs like a dog. Normally (90% of the time) it times out before reaching a page, though it is trying to transfer the data.

Let's be clear about this. It was fine. The very next time I used firefox - minutes after the password debarcle, it was cac, and has remained cac ever since.

I've been whizzing around on firefox for over a year without any issues. There have been no changes to the router. My microsoft laptop has no issue with the internet so it cant be router or telco related. Though I did reset the router (power and phone line) just to be sure. It didn't help.

I clear the private data (Tools menu) in firefox regularly (daily-ish). That is the only housekeeping I do on this machine. (It only gets used for mail, internet and the odd simple OpenOffice document). There is stacks of space left (70 Gig). I'm not sure how to check memory.

Googled for help and tried some command to purge temp files. That didn't help.

I love my linux laptop, but currently I'm having to resort back to my windows one.