BleepingComputer.com: Firefox Using 90+% Of Cpu Sometimes -- Why?

Not sure if this should go here or in the XP Forum... Mod -- please feel free to move there, if appropriate. Thanks!

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Firefox 2.0.0.6
Windows XP Home SP2
Laptop w/ dial-up

Two times now (on two different days), Firefox started using like 90% or more of the CPU and pretty much froze up temporarily (and the fan starts running high speed). When this is happening, I try to open Task Manager, and that even takes half a minute to open up. I can't scroll on the webpage I'm on. I had two tabs open at the time -- one for amazon.com and the other for barnesandnoble.com. That was this second time. I don't recall what I had open the first time. I've been using Firefox 2.0.0.6 since it was released, and this only just started two days ago (and has happened twice -- though I haven't been on the computer much, it did happen each of the two times I was briefly on these past two days -- so I can't say how often it happens if I'm on a lot).

Something else to note, which may or may not be related:

Before this happened (so like last week), I was off-line (I have dial-up), and I heard my fan start running on high speed on my laptop, and I opened Task Manager and saw that a process called HelpServ.exe (I think that was it...? I didn't get to write it down before it vanished) was listed and was using anywhere between 30% and 50% (I think) of the CPU (it alternated between different %'s). I had Outlook Express and Microsoft Word opened at the time. It lasted for about 20 seconds, then the process vanished from the Task Manager list. I searched for a file called HelpServ.exe on my hard drive, and nothing comes up. So that's weird... (Maybe I have the name wrong for what was listed in Task Manager...?)

I posted about this other thing in the "Am I Infected...?" forum, but got no response. Please note that I did run AVG A/V Free, AVG Anti-Spyware Free, SpyBot, and Ad-Aware SE and nothing bad was found.

Any thoughts/help is appreciated -- thanks!

Helpserv is part of the windows update compressed library, and runs when the computer tries to contact the update server. If you are not connected, the process shuts down in a few seconds. The only way I know of to stop this is to turn off automatic updates.

oldf@rt, on Sep 6 2007, 01:01 PM, said:

Automatic Updates are turned off. Have been since Day 1 when I first bought the computer about a year ago.

So any idea why it would run then?