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My New Tab page has been taken over by a search engine.

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  • 4 have this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

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I went into about:config and searched for browse.newtab.url . I found the value that contains the search engine address, but what do I change it to, and how do I change it?

I went into about:config and searched for browse.newtab.url . I found the value that contains the search engine address, but what do I change it to, and how do I change it?

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If you've found the browser.newtab.url pref in about:config, you can simply right clicking > Modify > and type about:newtab to restore it to the default.

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Sometimes a problem with Firefox may be a result of malware installed on your computer, that you may not be aware of.

You can try these free programs to scan for malware, which work with your existing antivirus software:

Microsoft Security Essentials is a good permanent antivirus for Windows 7/Vista/XP if you don't already have one.

Further information can be found in the Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware article.

Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!

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Your System Details list shows that you have a user.js file in the profile folder to initialize prefs each time Firefox starts.

The user.js file is only present if you or other software has created this file and normally it wouldn't be there. You can check its content with a plain text editor (right-click: Open with) if you didn't create this file yourself.

The user.js file is read each time Firefox is started and initializes preferences to the value specified in this file, so preferences set via user.js can only be changed temporarily for the current session.

You can use this button to go to the currently used Firefox profile folder:

  • Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder (Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder)