Homepage displayed in new window
Hello Mozilla community!
yesterday I installed a program which installed adware (I overlooked a little checkbox). It also changed a couple of settings in my standard browser (Firefox) like the search engine etc. It also changed the homepage. I always had the homepage pointing to my YouTube feed. I changed it back to it using the about:preferences#home method. Under "Homepage and new windows" I set the homepage to my custom URL and the home button works perfectly fine. Yet when I open a new window (with ctrl+n, not a new tab!) it also displays my home page (YouTube). It has never done that before and I cannot find anything in the settings to change that. I tried looking in about:config with browser.newtab but didn't find anything that seemed related to my problem. A couple of weeks ago I tried Firefox Nightly and I started it up and the homepage worked fine AND it didn't display it in a new window. It only did this after it synchronized the data with my Firefox account. Now my question is: How can I remove the the Homepage from a new window (and replace it with an empty page or the Firefox Home)? Thanks in advance for your suggestions!
Kindly Jay
p.s. I attached the Troubleshooting Information and I'm using Linux
All Replies (5)
hello jay,
it's possible that your browser has been hijacked.
however, i believe that even if you tweaked the settings with your preferences, the adware will over ride them.
my suggestion is to monitor your memory and look for that itty bitty file that is loading into memory and manipulating your browser.
once you find which one it is and where its located, you can delete the file and or its secret folder.
to monitory the processes in memory, open the task manager via ctrl alt del keys.
then sort the process list from high usage to lot usage, high being at the top.
then when you launch the browser, you will not only find FF going to the top of the list but might also find a little file that does as well. This little file may likely by the malware.
also, if you want to see if the browser has been hijacked, download an old app called "hijack this".
then browse thru the list looking for those references to webpages that are controlling your browser.
but keep in mind, only focus on the problem ones. all the other entries on the list are "helpers" and not malicious hijackers.
Firefox has always shown the homepage if you open a new window via the file menu, so you either need to set the homepage to a blank page or use other ways to open a new window like shift-click an about:blank bookmark. You can possibly use a bookmark to open the YouTube page that you currently have set as the homepage.
~dbben said
hello jay, it's possible that your browser has been hijacked. however, i believe that even if you tweaked the settings with your preferences, the adware will over ride them. my suggestion is to monitor your memory and look for that itty bitty file that is loading into memory and manipulating your browser. once you find which one it is and where its located, you can delete the file and or its secret folder. to monitory the processes in memory, open the task manager via ctrl alt del keys. then sort the process list from high usage to lot usage, high being at the top. then when you launch the browser, you will not only find FF going to the top of the list but might also find a little file that does as well. This little file may likely by the malware. also, if you want to see if the browser has been hijacked, download an old app called "hijack this". then browse thru the list looking for those references to webpages that are controlling your browser. but keep in mind, only focus on the problem ones. all the other entries on the list are "helpers" and not malicious hijackers.
Thank you for your quick and detailed answer! I doubt that a process is causing this because I installed the program using windows (I dual boot Windows and Linux) and I noticed it using Linux (I use Windows for Gaming and Linux for other stuff) after it finished syncing my FF-Account data. My first clue was a extension which might have been installed but I cannot find one and I am not sure whether a program can install one. Thank you for mentioning "hijack this". I'll use it and see if I can find anything.
cor-el said
Firefox has always shown the homepage if you open a new window via the file menu, so you either need to set the homepage to a blank page or use other ways to open a new window like shift-click an about:blank bookmark. You can possibly use a bookmark to open the YouTube page that you currently have set as the homepage.
Thank you for your answer. I'm 100% sure that it worked before. As i mentioned, I tested it with FF Nightly and it worked perfectly until it synced the data with my FF-Account. If I am unable to find a solution I'll try to write my own extension which solves the problem.
I was looking into Microsoft Edge browser.
What was surprising is that it appears to have aggregated all of my logins and passwords from FireFox browser.
However i had not given permission for this duplication to occur. And then i wonder how this was possible anyways
So now I am thinking that maybe FireFox is experiencing issues as the result of the operating system tapping into the FIreFox folders.