For full details, see my tech blog post. Needless to say, I am thankful for having persisted with the links of my searches on the web. Once I applied the fix, it worked!
The amazing thing is that if I would have just tried the new beta, the problem would have been solved, but I was not ready for more beta software right now. You know, the stuff that is not quite ready for general release or sale. Somebody has to test the stuff to make sure it all works.
Will have to say that we now have two very clean (computer-speak) machines. Anti-virus scanned, adware scanned and systems optimized and registries cleaned. OK, so you are not a tech person, and that's alright. Just used some "tools" that are available to all of us to keep our machines running well.
Why Firefox you ask? Mostly because it does not have the Microsoft hooks and holes that the bad guys like to exploit. Also because I try to avoid MS stuff unless I have to. That's a discussion for another day.