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Searches directed to Yahoo

cadbury_egg
cadbury_egg
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Back in 4.0, I used to be able to type search terms into the location bar and get a Google search. Ever since 5.0, though, I've been directed to Yahoo. I've scanned my computer for viruses and spyware, and it's clean; I'm pretty sure that the issue isn't related to any of my add-ons, since only a few are working with 6.0 and this happened when I updated with 5.0. Now, I know how to manually set Google as my search engine, but what I really want is to get back is the capability to type something like "wiki paris" and go directly to Wikipedia's page on Paris, or "imdb sophia myles" and be sent to Sophia Myles's IMDB page. Putting in the URL on about:config doesn't let me do this. Is it possible to fix this?

Back in 4.0, I used to be able to type search terms into the location bar and get a Google search. Ever since 5.0, though, I've been directed to Yahoo. I've scanned my computer for viruses and spyware, and it's clean; I'm pretty sure that the issue isn't related to any of my add-ons, since only a few are working with 6.0 and this happened when I updated with 5.0. Now, I know how to manually set Google as my search engine, but what I really want is to get back is the capability to type something like "wiki paris" and go directly to Wikipedia's page on Paris, or "imdb sophia myles" and be sent to Sophia Myles's IMDB page. Putting in the URL on about:config doesn't let me do this. Is it possible to fix this?

Chosen solution

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

You can open the about:config page via the location bar and do a search for yahoo via the Filter at the top of the about:config page.
You can reset all yahoo prefs via the right-click context menu to their default values if they appear bold (user set).

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All Replies (4)

David McRitchie
David McRitchie
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Getting rid of the Yahoo toolbar


Please mark "Solved" one answer that will best help others with a similar problem -- hope this was it.

cadbury_egg
cadbury_egg Question owner
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Unfortunately, I don't have a Yahoo toolbar installed.

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Chosen Solution

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

You can open the about:config page via the location bar and do a search for yahoo via the Filter at the top of the about:config page.
You can reset all yahoo prefs via the right-click context menu to their default values if they appear bold (user set).

cadbury_egg
cadbury_egg Question owner
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Thanks! I didn't try opening in Safe Mode, just went to about:config and searched for Yahoo. (Which seems very obvious in retrospect.) Close to the top were a few strings saying "default search engine", which I changed to Google. It works now!