crash during updates and firefox running can not log into internet

Hmm, I don't recognize the symptoms of what you've described. However, a couple of thoughts:

1. Are you sure the 404 page error isn't just an isolated event?
  - After I update Firefox I regularly get a 404 error page on mozilla.com about the updates that it just applied.
  - A 404 page, if that's indeed the error page you're getting, is actually a good thing: it means you *have* made contact with a webserver, it just couldn't find the particular page your browser requested. Are you able to surf to other pages, like http://www.google.com/ ?

2. If you've recently rebooted (for whatever reason), any credentials you may have saved (such as passwords) may need to be reentered. (Passwords are sometimes needed to let you authenticate with wireless networks.)

3. One especially notorious bug in Firefox was a delay while it wrote everything it needed to write the harddrive. This could be a few milliseconds pause, or a few seconds pause. It may not be your particular issue but what happens if you leave Firefox alone for a minute or two after closing it? Does it eventually close?

it does allow me to surf other pages. I understand entering the passwords, but why do I have to do this everytime I go online? Firefox does close. The bug tab automatically comes up on start up and shut down, when I am shuting it down, the bug window comes up, I click the cancel button, and then nothing else happens will not shut down and my tool bar has disapeared. I have only had this laptop two days and so far I want to throw it out the window!

Hi :)

When yo are booting up the machine do you get several different options for booting into Ubuntu? Is this a Dell Mini9 machine?

Can you open Synaptic Package Manager
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticHowto
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SynapticHowto#How%20to%20fix%20broken%20packages

Please let us know how this goes!
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)