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Firefox always displays Microsoft homepage on startup

ChrisCousins
ChrisCousins

Hi - hope someone can help with this, I've been having an issue over the last few days where Firefox on my PC always startsup with the Microsoft homepage (https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/). It's not a massive inconvenience but a bit puzzling, and I'd like to get to the bottom of why this is happening.

It's a custom build PC, quite bare-bones, and Firefox has been running fine for over a year. I had some notifications from Windows Defender about a Trojan, Foretype.A!ml - this has been quarantined and deleted as far as I can tell. Not sure how relevant this is, but the Firefox problem started at around the same time, which worries me.

What I've tried:

1) Restore homepage

2) Checked the 'target' of the Firefox icon

3) Uninstalled & reinstalled Firefox

4) Used 'about:config' and edited the <browser.startup.page> to zero, and <browser.startup.homepage> is 'about:home'

5) Used the command line 'firefox -ProfileManager', tried a clean profile.

None of this seems to work. So... any ideas? Thanks in advance! Chris

Hi - hope someone can help with this, I've been having an issue over the last few days where Firefox on my PC always startsup with the Microsoft homepage (https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/). It's not a massive inconvenience but a bit puzzling, and I'd like to get to the bottom of why this is happening. It's a custom build PC, quite bare-bones, and Firefox has been running fine for over a year. I had some notifications from Windows Defender about a Trojan, Foretype.A!ml - this has been quarantined and deleted as far as I can tell. Not sure how relevant this is, but the Firefox problem started at around the same time, which worries me. What I've tried: 1) Restore homepage 2) Checked the 'target' of the Firefox icon 3) Uninstalled & reinstalled Firefox 4) Used 'about:config' and edited the <browser.startup.page> to zero, and <browser.startup.homepage> is 'about:home' 5) Used the command line 'firefox -ProfileManager', tried a clean profile. None of this seems to work. So... any ideas? Thanks in advance! Chris

Modified by ChrisCousins

Chosen solution

Hah - having quite a good conversation with myself here!

News is that I was right to be worried, Windows Defender hadn't cleaned up properly and there was a Trojan sat in my C:\ProgramData. Kapersky VRT did the removal, now my homepage is back. Yay ;-)

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All Replies (3)

ChrisCousins
ChrisCousins Question owner

Thought I should mention one more thing that's been tried, I've used 'refresh Firefox' in the about:support section

ChrisCousins
ChrisCousins Question owner

One more update. I've got Chrome installed on this machine, and just tried it - same problem. The exact site it targets is: http://go.microsoft.com/?69157 So -- I'm guessing the virus did some damage before it was deleted.

ChrisCousins
ChrisCousins Question owner

Chosen Solution

Hah - having quite a good conversation with myself here!

News is that I was right to be worried, Windows Defender hadn't cleaned up properly and there was a Trojan sat in my C:\ProgramData. Kapersky VRT did the removal, now my homepage is back. Yay ;-)