If you use the built-in Firefox home page (to compare, you can paste about:home in the address bar and press Enter), that often will mention Firefox for Android. However, I can't think of any other pages it would normally appear on.

Does the unwanted page appear in a separate window? If so, can you copy the address of the page and paste it into a reply for further investigation? If the address bar is not visible, try using right-click > View Page Info then triple-click the URL to the right of the word Address: to select it and use Ctrl+c to copy it.

lifej said

When I close firefox on my desktop computer windows 7 i get a screen that says get firefox for android and get disconnect. I do not want this. i saw something on the help section under about:config, but the file wasn't there. I really do not understand this. I thought firefox was anindependent outfit not owned by some big corporation? Why then are they harassing me with stuff I don't want with no option to turn it off? I want to turn this off, and i want to turn off anything and evertything in the future too. stop sending me this stuff

I use a Microsoft Digital Media Pro Keyboard, and I have the key button (initially called log off, but it is programmable) set to "Close active file or window" - and this has worked flawlessly for many years to do just that. Now when i hit that button I get that message instead. It has no URL or anything, but this is what I get whenever I use that keyboard button to close. I can then go close it with the top right X button. There are two images on the left it says get firefox for android, on the right it says get disconnect. When I move my cursor over it the images change. so it's a pop-up of a sort I guess.

Hmm, it's labeled New Tab. Do you see that same page when you open a new tab using Ctrl+t?

There seems to be some kind of menu icon in the upper right of that page (gray dots). If you zoom out on that page (Ctrl- a couple times) can you access that and see whether it has any information about what it is?

Or you could check your new tab page setting here:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste newtab and pause while the list is filtered

(3) At this point you could double-click the browser.newtab.url preference and enter your preferred page:

• Page thumbnails (default) => about:newtab
• Blank tab => about:blank
• Built-in Firefox home page => about:home
• Any other page => full URL to the page

Press Ctrl+t to open a new tab and verify that it worked. Fixed?

If problems persist, some potential diagnoses and remedies:

If Firefox won't let you edit this setting: you may have something called SearchProtect on your system. This needs to be removed from the Windows Control Panel.

If Firefox lets you save your change but ignores it: one of your extensions may be overriding it. You can review, disable, and/or remove extensions on the add-ons page. Either:

• Ctrl+Shift+a
• "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons

In the left column, click Extensions. Then cast a critical eye over the list on the right and disable (or remove) anything unknown.

If the change works during your session, but at the next startup is back to the unwanted page: you might have a user.js file in your personal Firefox settings folder (your Firefox profile folder). This article describes how to track down and remove the file: How to fix preferences that won't save.

Any luck?

That setting wouldn't explain the extra window, but I suspect they are related.

That looks like directory tiles on the about:newtab page

Did you try to select Classic mode if you currently have Enhanced mode?

If you want to remove the sponsored directory links on the about:newtab page then use these steps:

You can set the browser.newtabpage.directory.source pref to an empty string on the about:config page.

• browser.newtabpage.directory.source = <empty>

You can delete the directoryLinks.json file in the parent location of the disk cache to remove the currently stored directory links.

• delete directoryLinks.json

See the about:cache page for the location of the disk cache and go one level up.

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

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/about:config

lifej said

When I close firefox on my desktop computer windows 7 i get a screen that says get firefox for android and get disconnect. I do not want this. i saw something on the help section under about:config, but the file wasn't there. I really do not understand this. I thought firefox was anindependent outfit not owned by some big corporation? Why then are they harassing me with stuff I don't want with no option to turn it off? I want to turn this off, and i want to turn off anything and evertything in the future too. stop sending me this stuff

What this did was to replace the annoying popup with a blamk page popup - but does not keep it from loading that instead of simply closing like it should, still rendering my keyboard button what shall we say, hijacked? The response from cor-el may be on to something, but I wasnt sure how to apply the instructions - type <empty> ? And so that's where I stopped - attaching a shot of what is there. Also the rest of the instructions from cor-el I did not understand

With the browser.newtab.url pref set to about:blank my instruction do not apply. Those are only when browser.newtab.url is set to the default about:newtab page.

You can open the about:cache page via the location bar and look at the "Storage disk location" line under the Disk section. That will give the location of the disk cache. If you remove the trailing cache2\ part then you end up with the location of the parent folder of the disk cache.

• C:\Users\<user>\AppData\Local\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<profile>\

If you go to this location in a file manager (Windows Explorer) then you should find the directoryLinks.json file.

The AppData folder is a hidden folder.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Show_hidden_files_and_folders

I wonder what that button telling Firefox to do? More particularly, what keystroke is it sending to Firefox.

The next few times, instead of using that button, try using one of these and see what happens:

• Alt+F4 ("close window")
• Ctrl+F4 ("close document")
• Ctrl+w ("close document")

Do you notice a difference between them in how Firefox responds?

When using Ctrl+w and Ctrl+F4 to close the last tab, Firefox can be set to open the "New Tab" page instead of closing the window. To check whether that has been turned on:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste tabs and pause while the list is filtered

(3) If the browser.tabs.closeWindowWithLastTab preference is bolded and "user set" to false, double-click it to restore the default value of true.

If you use any tab-related extensions, you might need to check that, too, since it may override this preference.