Internet Constantly Crashing on MacBook! Grr.

Please help! Here's my story...

Bought a Macbook on eBay in January. Has worked really well - love Macs! My innocent 3 year old grabbed it and walked away, tripping on a pillow and landing with it on my kitchen floor with quite some force. It then was super slow, acting weird. Finally decided to self-diagnose it with a bad hard drive (it was a 80gb Toshiba). Luckily I had nothing stored on it.
Bought a used hard drive from a reputable seller on eBay to try that first. It was a 60gb Seagate with 5400 rpm I think.
Came in the mail and loaded it in - proceeded to "erase" or something to partition it or whatnot to get it to "recognize" the hard drive. (All a learning experience for me, as you can see!) Downloaded the Mac OS X 10.4.11 from the 2 discs that came with it. Looked like it worked all really well.
I did all the necessary updates - by "looking" for the software updates and installing them. I made sure Flash was updated too - I actually went to the Adobe website (can't believe it let me!) and downloaded it but it said that I already had a newer version on my computer.
SO now I have a working computer. But every time I open Safari or Firefox I have about 1 minute before it crashes. Sometimes sooner - depending on what website I click on. It seems like when I try to go to YouTube or sign into eBay it does it immediately. Sometimes I can get to Netflix and start a movie quick before it crashes and then we're good.
My main guess was something to do with the Flash. But it's updated to the newest version I could get so that must not be it.
I've restarted it many times after trying different things and that does nothing. I've got to system utilities and tried the "verify disk permissions" AND "repair disk permissions" and those all come out okay. Doesn't change anything. Tested the hard drive by going through one of the discs (diagnostic) and that's fine.

I'm at a total loss now. I've searched the internet and tried everything people have suggested. My only other option is to re-install Mac OS X onto the hard drive possibly (somehow)?

Does anyone have any clue, please?? Don't know any other Mac repair men to help - not even sure if there is one in my small town!

How does the computer perform when you are NOT using a web browser or any internet-connected program?

chas_m said:

How does the computer perform when you are NOT using a web browser or any internet-connected program?

Click to expand...

I just went on to double check - and everything works great. I can open applications, browse around quickly, no rainbow wheel. The internet simply crashes. Which is why I downloaded Firefox quick to make sure it wasn't just a problem with Safari.

You might try getting the "ClickToFlash" Safari Extension, set it to block all Flash, and then see if you can surf without crashing. If so, then what you'll probably need to do is UNinstall Flash completely, THEN install the latest version.

chas_m said:

You might try getting the "ClickToFlash" Safari Extension, set it to block all Flash, and then see if you can surf without crashing. If so, then what you'll probably need to do is UNinstall Flash completely, THEN install the latest version.

Click to expand...

Okay, I downloaded the ClickToFlash extension and actually couldn't get it to show up anywhere (in my preferences in Safari) - even when restarted. So I decided to go right for the uninstall of Adobe. Uninstalled it - could surf around but not play YouTube videos. Went back and installed it again. Looks like it works! And now I can see the preferences of the ClickToFlash so I think I'll keep that just in case. Might help with my horrible flash issues.

Thanks for the help!
This is super frustrating so I hope that someone searching online to help solve their problems may find this and try this before pulling their hair out!