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Firefox 42.0 automatically loads an "option" tab as if a selected website. How do I fix this?

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Firefox 42.0 automatically loads an "option" tab as if a selected website. How do I fix this? I cannot find any navigation to keep this from happening. This started when "ask.com" hijacked my browser. I can now load my selected home page but can't get the "option" tab from automatically appearing along with my other selected websites in the above tabs. Thanks.

Firefox 42.0 automatically loads an "option" tab as if a selected website. How do I fix this? I cannot find any navigation to keep this from happening. This started when "ask.com" hijacked my browser. I can now load my selected home page but can't get the "option" tab from automatically appearing along with my other selected websites in the above tabs. Thanks.

Chosen solution

Firefox uses a vertical bar ('|') to separate multiple home pages. You can check the home page setting to see if the about:preferences page is included as one of the home pages (|about:preferences#general).

This can happen if you click "Use Current Page(s)" to set the home page and about:preferences is open in a tab. You can pin the tab with the about:preferences page via the right-click context menu of the tab to prevent including about:preferences to the home page setting if you want to use this button in "Options/Preferences > General". To set a single page as the home page you can drag the globe/padlock to the toolbar Home button.

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Chosen Solution

Firefox uses a vertical bar ('|') to separate multiple home pages. You can check the home page setting to see if the about:preferences page is included as one of the home pages (|about:preferences#general).

This can happen if you click "Use Current Page(s)" to set the home page and about:preferences is open in a tab. You can pin the tab with the about:preferences page via the right-click context menu of the tab to prevent including about:preferences to the home page setting if you want to use this button in "Options/Preferences > General". To set a single page as the home page you can drag the globe/padlock to the toolbar Home button.

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The solution explanation was well-crafted and made the task of removing the unwanted tab upon start-up simple and easy. Many thanks to cor-el.

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Mozilla has fixed that |about:preferences#general being included, with the Firefox 46.0 version.