Somehow you ended up on a scam site that keeps reloading. Press the Esc key on the keyboard several times rapidly to break the cycle. Then right-click the Back button to see the immediately previous page you visited in case that helps identify where the redirect came from.

If you think this has crept in as a home page or startup page, here's where you can check on those:

(1) Home Page setting. Either:

• How to set the home page
• Startup, home page, tabs, and download settings

(2) Hijacked shortcut

The Firefox icon can be set up to launch specific pages at startup (or more specifically, when you use the icon). To check whether that is set:

First, open the shortcut as follows:

• Desktop shortcut: right-click the icon, choose Properties
• Pinned taskbar icon: right-click the icon, right-click Mozilla Firefox, choose Properties

Windows normally will select the Shortcut tab. If not, go ahead and click the Shortcut tab.

You'll see the Target highlighted. On 64-bit Windows, that usually is no more and no less than the following:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"

If anything follows after that, try clearing it out.

After OK'ing the Properties dialog, you can test right away to confirm that Firefox now launches only your home page. Either:

• double-click desktop shortcut
• right-click pinned taskbar icon, click Mozilla Firefox

Success?

Sometimes add-ons override the built-in settings. Here are the suggest next steps for tracking down and cleaning up bad add-ons, hijackers, and other troublemakers. I know it seems long, but it's not that bad.

(1) Open the Windows Control Panel, Uninstall a Program. After the list loads, click the "Installed on" column heading to group the infections, I mean, additions, by date. This can help in smoking out undisclosed bundle items that snuck in with some software you agreed to install. Take out as much trash as possible here. (If in doubt, feel free to post a screenshot.)

(2) Open Firefox's Add-ons page using either:

• Ctrl+Shift+a
• "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons
• in the Windows "Run" dialog, type or paste
  firefox.exe "about:addons"

In the left column, click Plugins. Set nonessential and unrecognized plugins to "Never Activate".

In the left column, click Extensions. Then, if in doubt, disable (or Remove, if possible) unrecognized and unwanted extensions. Bear in mind that all extensions are optional.

Often a link will appear above at least one disabled extension to restart Firefox. You can complete your work on the tab and click one of the links as the last step.

Any improvement?

(3) You can search for remaining issues with the scanning/cleaning tools listed in our support article: Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware. These on-demand scanners are free and take considerable time to run. If they finish quickly and especially if they require payment, you may have a serious infection. I suggest the specialized forums listed in the article in that case.

Back to normal?