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Can I unistall firefox and reinstall it without losing all my bookmarks?

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{S HELP I got onto a website that "took over" my homepage. when I go to preferences and select in Options> homepage and set my HP back to my orig HP: my yahoo, I get the repetitive, annoying err msg to the effect of "You have changed your homepage. Do you want to keep it or revert back to 'online mapfinder.com' " I need to U&R to see if I can lose that page for good. hence the orig question ".. Can I ... without losing all ..." Can anyone help or suggest alternative that will lose that page?

{S HELP I got onto a website that "took over" my homepage. when I go to preferences and select in Options> homepage and set my HP back to my orig HP: my yahoo, I get the repetitive, annoying err msg to the effect of "You have changed your homepage. Do you want to keep it or revert back to 'online mapfinder.com' " I need to U&R to see if I can lose that page for good. hence the orig question ".. Can I ... without losing all ..." Can anyone help or suggest alternative that will lose that page?

All Replies (1)

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Uninstall/reinstall using standard Firefox uninstaller/installer won't change your settings, so it won't help.

Here is my suggested approach to finding and removing bad add-ons and other types of malware that may pop up annoying messages. I know it seems long, but it's really not that bad.

(For Windows Vista, 7, 8, 8.1, 10; XP is somewhat different)

(1) Open the Windows Control Panel, Uninstall a Program. After the list loads, click the "Installed on" column heading to group the infections, I mean, additions, by date. This can help in smoking out undisclosed bundle items that snuck in with some software you agreed to install. Be suspicious of everything you do not recognize/remember, as malware often uses important or innocent sounding names to discourage you from removing it. Take out as much trash as possible here.

(2) Open Firefox's Add-ons page using either:

  • Ctrl+Shift+a
  • "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons
  • in the Windows "Run" dialog, type or paste
    firefox.exe "about:addons"

In the left column, click Plugins. Set nonessential and unrecognized plugins to "Never Activate".

In the left column, click Extensions. Then, if in doubt, disable (or Remove, if possible) unrecognized and unwanted extensions. All extensions are optional; troublemakers might not be obvious from their names.

Often a link will appear above at least one disabled extension to restart Firefox. You can complete your work on the tab and click one of the links as the last step.

Any improvement?

(3) You can search for remaining issues with the scanning/cleaning tools listed in our support article: Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware. These on-demand scanners are free and take considerable time to run. If they finish quickly and especially if they require payment, you may have a serious infection. I suggest the specialized forums listed in the article in that case.