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When I updated to foxfire 4 my search engine changed to ask.com. I hate Ask how do I go back

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  • 57 have this problem
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  • Last reply by grant7

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I really regret updating to foxfire 4 and if I cannot fix the problems I am going back to internet explorer. I absolutely loved the search engine plug in I was using unfortunately it is not available for 4. I tried going back but the old foxfire would not download. I kept getting errors. After the update the only search engine on foxfire was ASK.com. I HATE ASK.com. It kept highjacking my search engine for months before I managed to delete it totally from my computer. Now it is back and I can't seem to find how to delete it! I don't even have the option of using google or yahoo search engines. I managed to change to Dogpile that was ok.. but when I restarted foxfire... Dog pile left and ASK was back... I am a doctoral student and I do a lot of online research. ASK is a horrible site that does not even come close to meeting my needs. Did ASK come with the update? or did it highjack my computer again? In either case I want it GONE!

I really regret updating to foxfire 4 and if I cannot fix the problems I am going back to internet explorer. I absolutely loved the search engine plug in I was using unfortunately it is not available for 4. I tried going back but the old foxfire would not download. I kept getting errors. After the update the only search engine on foxfire was ASK.com. I HATE ASK.com. It kept highjacking my search engine for months before I managed to delete it totally from my computer. Now it is back and I can't seem to find how to delete it! I don't even have the option of using google or yahoo search engines. I managed to change to Dogpile that was ok.. but when I restarted foxfire... Dog pile left and ASK was back... I am a doctoral student and I do a lot of online research. ASK is a horrible site that does not even come close to meeting my needs. Did ASK come with the update? or did it highjack my computer again? In either case I want it GONE!

All Replies (4)

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Firefox doesn't use Ask.com for anything related to searches. Something else you have installed made that "search engine" change. If you don't discover what made that change and remove it, that may continue to happen.

There's three places that Ask.com can affect searches.

  1. The Location bar - where you type web addresses.
  2. The new Firefox 4 homepage - about:home
  3. The Search bar - to the right of the Location bar, which comes with 6 different search engines.

Where is your "search engine" problem located?

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You can open the about:config page via the location bar and do a search for ask.com via the Filter at the top of that page.
You can reset all ask.com related prefs via the right-click context menu to their default values.

To open the about:config page, type about:config in the location (address) bar and press the "Enter" key, just like you type the url of a website to open a website.
If you see a warning then you can confirm that you want to access that page.

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Ask.com comes up as my search engine only when I try to use the about:home home page with firefox 4. I've gone into my programs, add-ons, and plug-ins. I have also gone into about:config and changed my keyword.url (to google). In about:config I also changed ask.com to google.com in the following areas: browser.search.defaultengine browser.search:defaultenginename browser.search.order.1 and browser.search.selectedengine. Also in about:config I went into extensions.snipit.chromeURL and left that blank . I know Ask.com is still in my computer somewhere. On my wife`s side of the computer she does not get Ask.com coming up on her about:home home page; it is only on my side. I did invite this entity in many moons ago now by not paying proper attention to the check boxes when I downloaded something so I am guessing that`s why it`s only on my side of the computer.