If it was just Firefox, I would tell you to check the settings. But you said another browser is doing the same.

You may have ad / mal-ware. Further information can be found in the Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware article.

Run most or all of the listed malware scanners. Each works differently. If one program misses something, another may pick it up.

Is your home page okay? To test, press Ctrl+n to launch a new window. Do you get your expected home page or the two unwanted tabs?

Home Page Problem

What is the address of your home page? You can copy/paste it from the Options page: Startup, home page, tabs, and download settings.

If the address ends with |3|0 Firefox would interpret that to mean that everything before the first vertical bar is the first tab, then the part between the bars should open in the second tab, and the third tab should be the last part.

Actually, when I test that my Firefox determines that they are not real servers and then tries http://www.3.com/ -- but it could vary depending on your service provider.

Desktop Shortcut Problem

The Firefox icon can be set up to launch specific pages at startup (or more specifically, when you use the icon). To check whether that is set:

First, open the shortcut as follows:

• Desktop shortcut: right-click the icon, choose Properties
• Pinned taskbar icon: right-click the icon, right-click Mozilla Firefox, choose Properties

Windows normally will select the Shortcut tab. If not, go ahead and click the Shortcut tab.

You'll see the Target highlighted. On 64-bit Windows, that usually is no more and no less than the following:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"

If anything follows after that, try clearing it out.

After OK'ing the Properties dialog, you can test right away to confirm that Firefox now launches only your home page. Either:

• double-click desktop shortcut
• right-click pinned taskbar icon, click Mozilla Firefox

Success?