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I'm on windows 7, the new version seems to keep spawning a process which grinds my machine to a halt.

I've had to open task manager twice now to kill it. Only downloaded it 10 minutes ago.

Try starting Firefox in safe mode in case that's some broken extension:

No extensions installed. Literally just downloaded firefox.

sounds like you should file a bug about that so they can be aware of that problem and look into it.