Start Firefox in Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode to check if one of the extensions or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox (Tools) > Add-ons > Appearance/Themes).

• Don't make any changes on the Safe mode start window.
• https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Safe+Mode

See also:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Preferences_not_saved
• https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Preferences+are+not+saved

Obviously, I need to delete FF8 and use IE. These suggested steps removed add-ons but did not open up the grayed out "use current" option for homepage. In fact, it just permanently deleted all my add-ons. The other links turned out to be just abstractions of no use. Restarting Win7 after all those steps didn't help either.

Your extensions should become available (enabled) if you (re)start Firefox in normal mode.

Did you still have the home page problem in Save mode?

• Help > Restart with Add-ons Disabled

If it does work in Safe-mode then disable all extensions and then try to find which is causing it by enabling one at a time until the problem reappears.

• Use "Disable all add-ons" on the Safe mode start window to disable all extensions.
• Close and restart Firefox after each change via "File > Exit" (Mac: "Firefox > Quit"; Linux: "File > Quit")

See also:

• https://support.mozilla.com/kb/Troubleshooting+extensions+and+themes

No change; still homepage problem of grayed out "use current". Also, all add-ons erased (although, when I re-installed one of them, they all came back!) I still can not get FF to make my current page a homepage; it defaults to MSN. Therefore, when Google butted in and said to drag its icon to the toolbar homepage icon it replaced MSN with Google as the homepage. I think I should uninstall FF and start over.