How can I get a new tab to open to a specific page?

I use speed dial add-on and have for a few years. I had an issue with firefox yesterday and had to reinstall it and lost all my settings. I added the speed dial add-on and tried to set it as my home page, but when I restart instead of going to speed-dial it goes to a new tab page and the homepage has changed in the options setting. No matter how many times I try and switch startup page/home page to speed dial, it keeps changing back to new tab.