Firefox Community Forum

I'm trying to diagnose an unusual problem on a relative's computer elsewhere in the country via TeamViewer. When Firefox is initiated, the same picture (a man taking a shower) appears, and the VERY 'long URL starts with a Yahoo image file (yimg) and also contains buzzfeed.com well into that URL. I thought I could easily diagnose this, and have failed. Home page is set to blank page. I cleared all browsing data. When that failed I exported bookmarks, created a new profile, and the problem still continued, even before importing the bookmarks or adding any extensions. Something is retaining the unwanted startup behavior. Tonight, out of desperation, I will reconnect and look through the registry.

Can anyone surmise why an unwanted URL is being invoked upon Firefox startup?

I get three grey boxes at the top right of the Firefox start-up page. See the attached image. They dissappear if I search and enter another web page. The only way I can get rid of them is to reset Firefox. They return within 24 hours.

What are they and how can I get rid of them?

I manually added shortcuts to my home screen, but everytime I open the browser, the system automatically has added shortcuts I don't want. Also, when I delete these unwanted shortcuts, another unwanted one appears.

how can I stop this from happening?