So I found these in the mozilla.cfg file in C:\Users\*****\AppData\Local\Mozilla Firefox and deleted them. They came back once and then have seemed to stay deleted now. I'm not sure how they got there.

lockPref("browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsoredTopSites", true); lockPref("browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsored", true); lockPref("services.sync.prefs.sync.browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsoredTopSites", true); lockPref("services.sync.prefs.sync.browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsored", true);

Hey there! There was nothing to worry in the first place, unchecking the box higher in the hierarchy disabled everything greyed out if I am not mistaken - if you still want the greyed out boxes to be unchecked too, check the "Support Firefox" box again. You will then be able to uncheck the two lower ones, and can then uncheck "Support Firefox" again.

Deleting files in the Firefox folder is not your way to go when you want to change its effect - makes sense? You can see that there's a value "true" in the files, which will be changed to "false" by changing your settings. Open in a new tab "about:config" and search for "browser.newtabpage.activity-stream.showSponsored". Select "false".

Does that help?

So I found these in the mozilla.cfg file in C:\Users\*****\AppData\Local\Mozilla Firefox and deleted them. They came back once and then have seemed to stay deleted now. I'm not sure how they got there.

That's a very strange location for an AutoConfig file, and some strange settings. Are you running the version of Firefox that installs from the Microsoft store? Or another customized version?