Firefox shows its home directory when run, instead of my homepage
The other night I had a not too serious malware attach, which malwarebytes fixed. Everything worked fine afterwards, except Firefox lost my dark theme, and it displayed mozilla's home directory on my computer upon being run. Once I clicked on any favorite, that screen of directory info (files, etc) disappeared and everything worked normally. I restored the dark theme, but Firefox still displays that Mozilla directory of files whenever I run it. How can I get it to stop doing that? I am using XP, SP3, and Firefox 48.0.2 I think. Any help appreciated....
Chosen solution
Megaminx said
that was it! My shortcut had been altered by the malware so that when I clicked on Firefox, it called a file called "Firefox.bat", which Malwarebytes deleted.
Thank you for that detail. Yet another thing we have to try to remember to have people check -- is it .exe or .something else.
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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.
It could be that your desktop shortcut (or QuickLaunch icon) got corrupted during the cleanup. To investigate:
First, open the shortcut by right-clicking the icon and choosing Properties
Windows normally will select the Shortcut tab. If not, go ahead and click the Shortcut tab.
You'll see the Target highlighted. On 32-bit Windows XP, that usually is no more and no less than the following:
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"
If anything follows after that, clear it out.
After OK'ing the Properties dialog, you can test right away to confirm that Firefox now launches only your home page by double-clicking the icon (or for QuickLaunch, I think it's single-clicking).
Success?
that was it! My shortcut had been altered by the malware so that when I clicked on Firefox, it called a file called "Firefox.bat", which Malwarebytes deleted. Firefox was showing the directory to allow me to "find" the missing file. Once I changed the shortcut to Firefox.exe, everything worked fine! Thank you to both of you who replied!
Megaminx said
that was it! My shortcut had been altered by the malware so that when I clicked on Firefox, it called a file called "Firefox.bat", which Malwarebytes deleted. Firefox was showing the directory to allow me to "find" the missing file. Once I changed the shortcut to Firefox.exe, everything worked fine! Thank you to both of you who replied!
'So glad that worked out fine !
Would you be so kind as to mark jscher's answer as Chosen Solution, so others will know ?
Thank you and have a lovely weekend !
Modified by Happy112
Chosen Solution
Megaminx said
that was it! My shortcut had been altered by the malware so that when I clicked on Firefox, it called a file called "Firefox.bat", which Malwarebytes deleted.
Thank you for that detail. Yet another thing we have to try to remember to have people check -- is it .exe or .something else.