48 processes is not out of line. Symantec definitely can slow things down pretty significantly. Do you have enough access to shut down and restart the virus software?

If it's happening at the same time every day and it looks like a scan, it might be that there is a virus scan scheduled to automatically go once a day. Maybe it's supposed to run at midnight and is running at lunchtime instead?

Firefox (like most browsers) will use a lot of memory. it's CPU usage I'm interested in. a browser may use a lot of cpu while a page loads, but the cpu % should drop to near 0 after that (unless there' Flash, animation, etc.)

It looks like other users have had similar problems; the program in question hangs up when it's looking for a particular file and can't find it. But the solution may be beyond your purview; i.e., registry edits. You may consider asking your IT to look at this.

[link]

Hmm Norton can be very aggressive about running what it calls "idle time" scans. "Idle Time" apparently being nortonspeak for "because I want to."

I can open up the Symantec program, but it doesn't show me any scheduled scans and doesn't appear to be running, from that viewpoint. I can't terminate that process from the task manager (tried and it would not let me) so maybe it is an IT behind the scenes thing?

Ok, go back and answer tommy's question about CPU usage; he's correct in that stuff that just takes up a lot of memory isn't necessarily bogging you down. He wants to see what is actually using the cpu.

Thanks, Liese, I will show that page to the IT guy. (Gee, wouldn't it be nice if they could diagnose this and not just tell me I have "too many tabs open"?)

Opening the NYTimes web site made CPU of Firefox go from 1 to (briefly) 48, and then back down to 2. Is that bad? (I didn't install the Flashblock yet.)

I think 'too many tabs open' is the new 'did you try rebooting it?'