wifi connection crash on firefox start

Feisty with all updates, Toshiba Sat. a100 va9
Opening firefox after weeks of normal use got my computer to hang for 10 seconds (no mouse no music).
When it returned on demand processor scaling was maxed out on both cpus, which is rare on my rig.
It proceded to open firefox then prompted for keyring password, (probably for WEP key like on boot time) then wireless network stopped working.

Toggled Enable wireless network on panel icon.
Toggled Enable network.
Could not ReEnable wireless after network toggle
Toggled restricted drivers for wifi.

After a while the panel app disapeared and could not be brought back.

Also all Wifi connection information was deleted (ESSIDs, passwords etc)

Used wifiradar to bring back up wifi, but now icon on panel is not what it used to be, and kinda sucks.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Jul 18 16:41:33 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-panel
Package: gnome-panel 1:2.18.1-0ubuntu3.1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcCmdline: gnome-panel --sm-client-id default1
ProcCwd: /home/jeanphe
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-panel
Uname: Linux TechnicolorJim 2.6.20-16-generic #2 SMP Thu Jun 7 20:19:32 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux