My internet explorer now takes forever to load, tabbed pages won't load at all, more details below. Why?

You answered the question yourself "Firefox still works fine". Turn your back on IE, and embrace FireFox or Opera. Try Opera as well. Tabbed Browsing long, long ago, mouse gesture controls, speed dial, saved sessions options etc etc... Seriously, try Opera at least. That goes for everyone, trust me, you won't be disappointed.

This could be the IE Phishing Filter. Or, your caches and Temp. Internet Files may need cleaning out. There was also a recent large IE patch from Microsoft Update which has caused some problems. No cure for the patch, but the other problems are easy to fix.

Upgrade to Firefox or update your IE if it's not at its highest version. If the problem persists, then use your spy-ware software to clean out any unwanted files since some of them could be automatically loaded to your PC from the insecureness of IE.

I have the same problem and can't figure out why. Mozilla works fine, Previously I used them side by side. I understand that Mozilla is less virus prone, too

would help if you mentioned the explorer's version, if you are still using version 6, it has some slowness/crash issues, and microsoft resolved it by upgrading to version 7, the other fix for same crash is not offered to download, rather you have to request it,

best advice, upgrade explorer to latest version

good luck

Because you need to get Mozilla Firefox! Seriously though... IE is really annoying... and MFF works great! Try it- you'll love it!

Ditto. I also had to turn off my phishing filter.