Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

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.

Avatar for Username

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

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

New tab opens at wrong website

  • 3 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by dshirt

dshirt
dshirt
more options

I appear to have been recently infected by Ask search engine

Everytime I open a new tab it defaults to this search engine. I want to reset so that new tab displays thumbnails of recently visited sites

I have followed instructions from your Support website using about:config and newtab but the preference under browser.newtab.url seems correct at about:newtab

Yet new tab still defaults to search engine

How can I reset to thumbnails?

tks

I appear to have been recently infected by Ask search engine Everytime I open a new tab it defaults to this search engine. I want to reset so that new tab displays thumbnails of recently visited sites I have followed instructions from your Support website using about:config and newtab but the preference under browser.newtab.url seems correct at about:newtab Yet new tab still defaults to search engine How can I reset to thumbnails? tks

Chosen solution

You can use the SearchReset extension to reset some preferences to the default values.

Note that the SearchReset extension only runs once and then uninstalls automatically, so it won't show on the "Firefox > Add-ons" page (about:addons).

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

Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem.

  • Switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance
  • Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window
Read this answer in context 👍 1

All Replies (3)

Moroccan
Moroccan
more options

Hello ! Please use it :

[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/reset-preferences-fix-problems]

cor-el
cor-el
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Chosen Solution

You can use the SearchReset extension to reset some preferences to the default values.

Note that the SearchReset extension only runs once and then uninstalls automatically, so it won't show on the "Firefox > Add-ons" page (about:addons).

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

Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem.

  • Switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance
  • Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window
dshirt
dshirt Question owner
more options

Yes, thats fixed it tks. When in about:config there was a user set preference Keyword.url which was pointing me to Ask.com. When I reset it, one restart it defaulted back to the same error. Starting in Safe mode was fine. I checked my extensions and there was something called Maps Galaxy which seemed to be causing the problem. I removed this and now everything is hunky dory. Tks for yr help