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Cursor will not activate Search window or any icon on opening page.It will open Bookmarks or any of the items on toolbar

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  • 2 have this problem
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  • Last reply by cor-el

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My OS is XP. When Firefox opens, the cursor will only activate subjects on the 'toolbar(s)'. The drop-down menu's work normally. The cursor will NOT activate the 'search' window, ie, you cannot type in a subject. Nor will any of the data boxes activate explaining the opening picture. I do not have 'Babylon' installed. I have used both Bing and Google as my search engine without any change. I have switched mouse brands to no avail.

My OS is XP. When Firefox opens, the cursor will only activate subjects on the 'toolbar(s)'. The drop-down menu's work normally. The cursor will NOT activate the 'search' window, ie, you cannot type in a subject. Nor will any of the data boxes activate explaining the opening picture. I do not have 'Babylon' installed. I have used both Bing and Google as my search engine without any change. I have switched mouse brands to no avail.

All Replies (1)

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Which search bar do you mean?

  • searching via the location bar (pref: keyword.URL)
  • search bar on the Navigation Toolbar
  • search bar on the about:home page (pref: browser.search.defaultenginename)
  • other search bar (e.g. added by extension)

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 or otherwise make changes.

Try to reset some preferences to the default with the SearchReset extension:

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).

Check the browser.search.defaultenginename pref on the about:config page and make sure that it is set to the default value Google.