Why does Firefox open a page at MSN on boot-up?
My machine is Intel QuadCore i5-3470 CPU @ 3.20GHz, 32 GB RAM, running MS Windows 10 Home on an MSI B75MA-P45 motherboard. It was assembled by Net Solution Computers of Morley, Western Australia, and has a SAMSUNG U28D590D VDU driven by an NVIDIA QUADRO K620 Video Card and RealTek High Definition Audio. I have Windows Defender as Anti-virus with Firefox and Skype running in the background.
When I boot my PC it opens one FF page at Vodafone (my ISP) which tells me that I am connected to the Internet. It opens a second instance of FF at the MSN homepage. I don't use MSN and wish to have nothing to do with it. How can I stop FF doing this.
Thanks
Chosen solution
I don't know how much help this is, but the last four times I have booted my machine that annoying instance of FF on MSN has not showed up. The only thing of significance I have done is to upgrade JAVA to the latest version.
Would that explain things?
Read this answer in context 👍 0All Replies (9)
Type about:preferences#general<enter> in the address bar.
There are two settings;
- When Firefox Starts
When the browser is started, what do you want to display? Many of us choose Show My Home Page.
- Home Page
When a new page is opened, what do you want to be displayed?
- Use Current Page. Use what ever page(s) are open at that time.
- Use Bookmark
- Restore To Default. about:home shows a Mozilla home page with tools.
You can use any of these that you wish;
about:home (Firefox default home page), about:newtab (shows the sites most visited), about:blank (a blank page),
or you can enter any webpage or about: page you want.
I checked all that our and: 1. Firefox is the default browser 2. Firefox should open at homepage (google).
I still get the second instance of FF opening at MSN.
How are you opening Firefox? Link, shortcut, icon . . . . . .
I am talking about FF opening automatically on boot.
One instance opens at Vodafone (my ISP) to set up being on-line. This is correct. My issue is with a second instance opening at the same time on MSN.
Then somewhere in the bootup, something is calling that web page.
Windows Icon > All Programs > Startup
Also, check the Task Scheduler.
This is Windows Icon --> task
TS 2018 shows nothing listed.
Do a malware check with several malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.
Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware. All these programs have free versions.
Make sure you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.
- Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware:
http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - AdwCleaner:
http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Removal-Tools/AdwCleaner.shtml - SuperAntispyware:
http://www.superantispyware.com/ - Microsoft Safety Scanner:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx - Windows Defender:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/using-defender - Spybot Search & Destroy:
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Kasperky Free Security Scan:
http://www.kaspersky.com/security-scan
You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.
- Anti-rootkit utility TDSSKiller:
http://support.kaspersky.com/5350?el=88446
See also:
- "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked
Chosen Solution
I don't know how much help this is, but the last four times I have booted my machine that annoying instance of FF on MSN has not showed up. The only thing of significance I have done is to upgrade JAVA to the latest version.
Would that explain things?
I don't see how, but keep an eye out.