Had a good working ubuntu 8.04 and upgraded it to 8.10 it immediately wanted to upgrade to 9.10 so I allowed that.
Firefox froze the system hard.
Removed Firefox 3.0 and installed sun-java6 and firefox 3.5 still freeaes
Is there a way using Synaptics Package manager or apt-get to roll back or downgrade to a working version of Ubuntu.
I have the live CDs and could just reinstall but then I would lose all my settings, Samba is working well and I hate to have to go through that hassle again.

Oh yes Firefox --safe-mode freezes the system as well

There is no supported downgrade path. Is Firefox your only issue? What is the full version number?

I'd backup my data ... and do a fresh install of 9.10 when its officially released. I tried an upgrade on my secondary Dell from 8.10 to 9.10... well lets just say "No more Ubuntu for me..." I then immediately put Arch on it... and it runs faster then ever before.

I have gnome 2.28 installed, and htop reports idle --- 160 mb used... amazing. This includes Arch's gnome meta, and gnome-extra meta groups.

Didt aptpget remove firefox and apt-get install firefox and now I have
firefox_3.0.14+build2+nobinonly-0ubuntu0.9.04.1_all.deb) ...

EDIT: It is still failing with an error message saying the protocals specified can not be authenticated.
I am executing from Terminal and it seem to Fail/Freeze every third or fourth time I execute it.

There is another firefox like browser named "flock".

Have a look over here for help with Firefox:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1193567

Thanks for the link, I'll probably back up and Load from CD and see what happens then. :-)

I gave up using the Ubuntu upgrade years ago - usually it's a total disaster.
If you create a separate /home partition, you can clean install (using same user and password), and pick up all settings - on the new software versions. Works great.
And you can revert to the immediate previous release (at least, all I've tried) via a clean (re-)install, and the same holds true.