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I don't see the gear icon to remove a page that keeps showing up when I open a new tab

  • 7 replies
  • 6 have this problem
  • 13 views
  • Last reply by GINAHERE

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Hello and I really appreciate the help because I just want firefox to work the way it used to and I am totally lost as to how THIS happened.

I have windows 7 64 bit. I have just once again uninstalled and reinstalled firefox. That has not solved the issue.
It is this:
When I have firefox open, and I click the plus sign to open a new tab, it now goes to BING and I did NOT set that. I want it to be a blank page. Like before. I have a home page. I had to CHANGE IT after reinstalling firefox AGAIN because it was automatically set to BING and I don't use it, don't want to, at this point, I don't even want to see it. 
But after what seemed like a headache I got the homepage back that I wanted.
But opening a new tab shows bing and the instructions here say use the gear tab to set my preferences. I do not see any gear on the upper right hand side. 

What is going on? Has BING taken over firefox? All I see across the right hand side are icons for bookmarks, downloads "group your tabs" and "start a conversation" and then the "open menu" icon. Any help is greatly appreciated. thanks, Gina

Hello and I really appreciate the help because I just want firefox to work the way it used to and I am totally lost as to how THIS happened. I have windows 7 64 bit. I have just once again uninstalled and reinstalled firefox. That has not solved the issue. It is this: When I have firefox open, and I click the plus sign to open a new tab, it now goes to BING and I did NOT set that. I want it to be a blank page. Like before. I have a home page. I had to CHANGE IT after reinstalling firefox AGAIN because it was automatically set to BING and I don't use it, don't want to, at this point, I don't even want to see it. But after what seemed like a headache I got the homepage back that I wanted. But opening a new tab shows bing and the instructions here say use the gear tab to set my preferences. I do not see any gear on the upper right hand side. What is going on? Has BING taken over firefox? All I see across the right hand side are icons for bookmarks, downloads "group your tabs" and "start a conversation" and then the "open menu" icon. Any help is greatly appreciated. thanks, Gina

Chosen solution

Install this extension. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/searchreset/ I will run to reset specific preferences and then disappear. Among the prefs it resets is the new Tab Page URL.

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Chosen Solution

Install this extension. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/searchreset/ I will run to reset specific preferences and then disappear. Among the prefs it resets is the new Tab Page URL.

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First of all, I don't see where I can EVEN SEE what the hell the add ons are. I click on those bars and "add ons" and all I see is, "get add ons" as if I want any. I can't tell what is there and what isn't. I DO NOT WANT ANY ADD ONS I DID NOT SPECIFICALLY AD ON MYSELF, AND I DO NOT KNOW WHAT THIS BROWSER IS DOING.

IT USED TO BE GREAT. 
I AM SO DISGUSTED WITH ANYTHING HIJACKING MY BROWSER, I REFUSED TO USE ANY BROWSER THAT ALLOWS THAT ANYMORE.
I COULD SCREAM, WHY I AM SCREAMING.
How can anyone do that? I downloaded this thing, but I don't know if it will work. 
This is a shame. Just when I had this as I wished, you folks at mozilla do this. 
leave well enough alone. Ask, let people choose. to see tht bing makes me SCREAM. If I want that as my home page i will get it.
now i have to re-set my home page, and I don't see that crank anywhere on my browser that lets me choose this is a bad thing to do, you people need to undo it.
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yes it did work. how long before something else comes up?

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Note that you can set the new tab page via the browser.newtab.url pref on the about:config page.

See this article about the New Tab page (about:newtab):

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.

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Hello

Thank you for responding. The previous download fixed it, but I want to see your links also.
My question, though, wasn't answered. What caused this? I never set any page to go to BING and boy was that getting on my nerves. I thought I had set foxfire to my preferences where my homepage is, and finally just when I am getting used to changes from an update (lesson: do not do updates) there are more changes and I can't figure out why they've changed. This last thing with BING felt like my browser was hijacked when I open a blank page but it goes to that big fat BING. It is not even a pleasant photo. 
 I also still don't see that little crank icon which at least I did understand you could click on that and choose your preferences. That's gone. There is a bubble in place called "conversations." I just don't like these, and I don't know how to rollback to a version I do like.
thanks for responding and your help,

Gina

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This can be done by an extension or by malware on your computer.

You can check for recently installed suspicious or unknown extensions.


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 that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.

You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.

See also:

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OMG malware.

 I am usually so very careful but I downloaded a codec and then I did uninstall it, but clearly it didn't make this go away.
 Thank you for this help. It is very hard to know when even downloading and installing these things whether you are downloading malware. 
  Before I posted a help question on the mozilla site, I looked at every download dated Feb. 28 because it had to come down on that day. I thought I had narrowed it down and uninstalled the offender. But after re-booting, it was still there.
 The fix provided by the robot did fix it, though.
 what I can't figure out is why this is BING attached to malware? I even went through the search engines I choose, and in what order and BING isn't among them.
  I went through ad ons and didn't see anything new. I have macafee, and did not get any warnings, either. 
Thanks for the assist. 
One more question: why did it attach itself to firefox? That is my default browser, but I have ie and chrome but it did not do that there.
 Thanks again,

Gina