I've not had the same issue as you and not using Firefox, but I've had problems getting logged in to GMail quite a lot in recent times, very often just extremely laggy at responding. But I've also had similar problems with Ymail and Hotmail from time to time.
Using W10x64. My suspicion is it's Windows Defender being somewhat "overactive". I've done nothing to actually prove that except I've noted it using a lot of resources in Task manager when I've had issues. HTH.

Is the system time and region correct in Windows?

Have you installed any security software in Windows which may have altered TLS/SSL settings and the like?

Do you have any VPN "stuff" installed?

Have you checked your Windows hosts file to ensure that it is free of entries?

In reply to a post by Pipexer:

Is the system time and region correct in Windows?

Have you installed any security software in Windows which may have altered TLS/SSL settings and the like?

Do you have any VPN "stuff" installed?

Have you checked your Windows hosts file to ensure that it is free of entries?

Thank you so much. As ever the combined expertise available through this Forum brings a massive range of talents and knowledge. No idea how it got there but the hosts file had a line inhibiting accounts.google.com. Took that line out and can now connect.

If you are ever in Northumberland, England I'll buy you a beer.

Edited by GonePostal (Wed 22-Apr-26 23:27:30)

Was the line in the host file something like

accounts.google.com [IP address]

Sometimes malicious websites or virus code alter the host file to redirect sites such as common bank sites or email accounts to fake web sites to steal credentials. This means even if you type the correct URL in the web browser you will go to the fake site. You might have been lucky if the fake sever had already been taken down or your ISP or anti virus software was blocking the site as a known phishing site.

I would change your email password (and possibly any other passwords used on that PC) and run a full virus scan.

Anthony

As you say that entry in the hosts file could not accidently have been added so a more thorough check of the PC is required. Would have been interesting to see the modified date of the hosts file before the entry was removed and where the entry was pointing.

In reply to a post by arendall667:

Was the line in the host file something like

accounts.google.com [IP address]

Sometimes malicious websites or virus code alter the host file to redirect sites such as common bank sites or email accounts to fake web sites to steal credentials. This means even if you type the correct URL in the web browser you will go to the fake site. You might have been lucky if the fake sever had already been taken down or your ISP or anti virus software was blocking the site as a known phishing site.

I would change your email password (and possibly any other passwords used on that PC) and run a full virus scan.

Anthony

Being overly addicted to keeping copies of everything I have hostsold.txt still on the system and that shows that the line I removed was the last line in the file; The last 4 lines were:

# localhost name resolution is handled within DNS itself.
# 127.0.0.1 localhost
# ::1 localhost
127.0.0.1 accounts.google.com

What are the implications of that text?

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

127.0.0.1 accounts.google.com

What are the implications of that text?

Hosts is saying to look for accounts.google.com on the local machine

The hosts file is basically an override for DNS.

Its purpose is primarily probably an assist tool for development/testing purposed, potentially useful if DNS is broken, and you force your way round it, but has security implications because ts use generates no notifications, warnings, browsers have no idea if it is used so cant warn you either.

It can however be made read only to prevent tampering, I think its also possible in the registry to make it lower priority than network DNS, which effectively disables it.

In reply to a post by GonePostal:

127.0.0.1 accounts.google.com

127.0.0.1 is known as the loopback address for your PC's network interface so thats better than your google login requests going to some unknown IP address on the internet. Just strange how the file got updated if it wasn't you.

If it's pointing at the local machine I'd suspect either it was an attempt to block all Google services, or some malware was trying to act as an HTTP proxy