This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

HOW DO I STOP ICQ FROM HIJACKING MY PREFFERED SEARCH ENGINE

more options

Every time I start firefox ICQ search hijacks my search engine in the tool bar . I have removed it many times. But on restart of firefox it comes back. Its very frustrating that they can do this.

Every time I start firefox ICQ search hijacks my search engine in the tool bar . I have removed it many times. But on restart of firefox it comes back. Its very frustrating that they can do this.

All Replies (7)

more options

1. On the address bar, type ‘about:config’ without quotes.

  2. Locate keyword.url
  3. Right click on it and reset.
more options

THANKS FOR YOUR HELP. I was able to stop the ICQ search engine by resetting it . But every time I restart the browser or open a new window I get the same red bar attempting to hijack my search engine to ICQ's Search engine. It just keeps coming back to haunt me.

more options

I also had the most annoying experience with icq. I uninstalled the program, did the "about:config" that everyone talked about but I still had the "icq search run by google" or something or other. anyway, to make a long story short, the FINAL thing i did was:

1. open up firefox 2. go to "tools" 3. choose "options" 4. type in "google.com" in the homepage section 5. click "ok"

i am never downloading icq again!

more options

1. On the address bar, type ‘about:config’ without quotes.

 2. Locate keyword.url
 3. Right click on it and reset.

That works but if you don't have the reset option because of the ICQ, all you have to do is "modify" and enter "http://www.google.com/search?q=" And walah!

Modified by ru1t

more options

I had the same problem like many people here, that custom searchbars keeps after uninstall or manually modify about:config. I managed to get rid of it by resetting to their default values the following entries in about:config

- browser.startup.homepage - browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID - browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone - browser.search.defaultenginename

Restarting Firefox will popup the window for the first launch after a fresh install/upgrade version, but this make me a happy panda about the search engines correctly used.

Modified by Simone

more options

Thank you guys sooo much for this! I was getting so mad!

Modified by tmarie1412

more options

Thank you so much :)) that was so frustraiting and makes me insane every time :)