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Remove services.freshy.com

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  • Last reply by cor-el

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How do I remove the software that hijacks my start page with services.freshy.com.

I did once find an add-on that did this and then removed itself but cannot seem to locate it anymore.

How do I remove the software that hijacks my start page with services.freshy.com. I did once find an add-on that did this and then removed itself but cannot seem to locate it anymore.

All Replies (3)

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If there is nothing unusual in your extensions, please check for an optional settings file named user.js file in your profile folder (personal settings folder). Firefox uses the settings in that file at startup to override your saved preferences from the previous session. Here's how to check:

Open your current Firefox settings (AKA Firefox profile) folder using either

  • "3-bar" menu button > "?" button > Troubleshooting Information
  • (menu bar) Help > Troubleshooting Information
  • type or paste about:support in the address bar and press Enter

In the first table on the page, click the "Show Folder" button. This should launch a new window listing various files and folders in Windows Explorer.

Scroll down and look for user.js

If you find a file named user (of type JScript) but not user.js, Windows may be hiding file extensions from you. To work with files as accurately as possible, I suggest unhiding them. This Microsoft support article has the steps: http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/wi.../show-hide-file-name-extensions.

If you find that file, rename it to userjs.txt so you can more easily view its contents. After renaming, you can right-click > Open it. If you get a script error, Windows didn't actually remove the .js extension and you can right-click > Edit it instead.

Does that file have a line starting with

user_pref("browser.startup.homepage"

If so, that's probably the source of the override. Leaving the userjs.txt file with that name should allow Firefox to ignore it and start up normally the next time.

Success?

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Sorry, I missed a step: you will still need to assign the correct home page after clearing the source of the problem. This article points to the section of the Options page where you can do that: Startup, home page, tabs, and download settings.

Also, I think the add-on you used before was this one: https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/searchreset/

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You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar and search for prefs that refer to services.freshy.com. You can reset user set (bold) services.freshy.com pref(s) prefs via the right-click context menu to the default value.

If you do not keep changes after a restart or otherwise have problems with preferences, see:

You can check the target line in the Firefox desktop shortcut (right-click: Properties) to make sure that nothing is appended after the path to the Firefox program.

See also: