Firefox4Life78: Additional windows pop up with gibberish sites
This is a continuation of yesterday's chat. When certain websites load Firefox opens a new window with six tabs. Some tabs are of local directories and the rest have gibberish URLs. Each time this happens it is the same six tabs. Many sites prompt the opening of one such window but many others prompt opening several. The record is 10.
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Did you check the Home page setting?
See this article for some suggestions: Firefox says it's just updated every time it starts - how to fix
See also http://kb.mozillazine.org/Preferences_not_saved and How to fix preferences that won't save
How to set the home page: Firefox supports multiple home pages separated by '|' symbols
This is not a homepage problem -- my homepage displays just fine. None of the gibberish tabs references anything close to my home page. I do not get a message about preferences not saved. My homepage designation lists only one page.
I thought this posting would get me back in touch with the Firefox assistant I had contacted in my earlier chat. Since it didn't (at least not yet) I'll explain a bit more.
When I visit certain websites (and there are many of them) Firefox opens a second window. Sometimes more than one extra window is opened (the record is 10). Each time it does so this second window always has the same six tabs. The tabs contain these URLs: (1) file:///C:/Program Files/Mozilla Firefox/
which shows the contents of that folder on my computer
(2) http://xn--}alf3 12yj1-bkb8qu85auj1lzfa.xn--cda/
the display area is blank
(3) http://www.¼?ßÚn´do2ÊÿÀسõjÅ…ƒîÜhí°¿e¼À…ŵ»^~Ôj.com/#%C2%BC%C2%A5%C3%9F%C3%B3%60Q/%C3%BF%C3%81%C2%B0%C2%81%E2%80%9C%06%C3%BFZ%12%03%C5%92%C2%AB%1BCy%C3%A9%C2%A6%C5%B8%E2%80%BA%C3%AA%C3%B3%0Ek%C2%AE%E2%80%94MH%C3%A8Ipok!%3E%C2%B8%C3%A3%C2%B5^%C3%9DGw%C3%93%C2%B7%C3%A7%C3%9A%C3%89%C3%A9
The display area shows the message "Problem loading, Server not found."
(4) http://www.xn-->nd-hqa.com/#%E2%80%A1%C3%B9ea
The same "Problem loading" message.
(5) file:///C:/Program%20Files/Mozilla%20Firefox/
Same as before.
(6) http://search2.comcast.com/?cat=dnsr&con=ds&url=www.xn--sda.com
The display area is a notice that Comcast could not find "www.xn-sda.com"
-- This problem happens so frequently and on so many sites it is quite annoying.
The original Firefox assistant suggested the problem might be malware. I have used Trend Micro to scan all disks. It only reported some suspect cookies, which it deleted. The Firefox problem was not affected.
Do a malware check with a few malware scan programs. You need to use all programs because each detects different malware. Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of the database.
http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php - Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware http://www.superantispyware.com/ - SuperAntispyware http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html - Spybot Search & Destroy http://www.lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php - Ad-Aware Free http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/defender/default.mspx - Windows Defender: Home Page .......... See also "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked
If you can't fix it with the above listed scanners then you need to ask advise on one of the forums that specialize in malware removal mentioned in the Popups_not_blocked article.
About 18 months ago my computer had a virus. I tried several of those free malware scan programs and none of them found that virus. That prompted me to delete the one I had and to buy Trend Micro. I have used it to scan both disks. It found a few questionable cookies, which it deleted, but had no effect on this problem.
Did this get resolved. I removed user profile from windows and rebuilt, still happens. Other users on machine do not see issue.