I have checked with Ash and he tells me that there has been no downtime on the Forum today, he thinks it sounds like problems with individual computers.
Referring to Stevezodiac's "malfunctioning or malicious add-on" he assures me that the site is totally safe and that this is Internet Explorer crashing. IE has caused lots of problems in the past which is why Ash recommends Firefox. He pursuaded me to transfer from IE to Firefox when I was having difficulty and it certainly seemed to resolve the issues.
I am sorry I cannot be more helpful to those of you with problems but hopefully the situation will soon right itself.