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Getting searching.com not start page that is set in options.

  • 2 replies
  • 4 have this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by DickDelt

DickDelt
DickDelt
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I went to about:config and cleared it in the newtaburl with reset and that gave me a blank page but still got the searching.com page at startup even though the right page was in about:config and in options. At the same time webpages started having words that belonged there showing up as double underlined links which had popup ads when he cursor went over them.

This happens in both firefox and nightly. I have uninstalled and reinstalled both of them twice to no avail.

I appreciate any help that you can provide. I am win 8.1 ff is the latest version available and nightly is 38.0a1.

I tried to upload the about:config info but it saves as a xul file which give an error.

I went to about:config and cleared it in the newtaburl with reset and that gave me a blank page but still got the searching.com page at startup even though the right page was in about:config and in options. At the same time webpages started having words that belonged there showing up as double underlined links which had popup ads when he cursor went over them. This happens in both firefox and nightly. I have uninstalled and reinstalled both of them twice to no avail. I appreciate any help that you can provide. I am win 8.1 ff is the latest version available and nightly is 38.0a1. I tried to upload the about:config info but it saves as a xul file which give an error.

Chosen solution

hi, this sounds like an issue with adware that is present on your system. please perform all these steps:

  1. reset firefox (this will keep your bookmarks and passwords)
  2. afterwards go to the firefox menu ≡ > addons > extensions and in case there are still extensions listed there, disable them.
  3. finally run a full scan of your system with different security tools like the free version of malwarebytes and adwcleaner to make sure that adware isn't present in other places of your system as well.

Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware

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All Replies (2)

philipp
philipp
  • Moderator
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Chosen Solution

hi, this sounds like an issue with adware that is present on your system. please perform all these steps:

  1. reset firefox (this will keep your bookmarks and passwords)
  2. afterwards go to the firefox menu ≡ > addons > extensions and in case there are still extensions listed there, disable them.
  3. finally run a full scan of your system with different security tools like the free version of malwarebytes and adwcleaner to make sure that adware isn't present in other places of your system as well.

Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware

DickDelt
DickDelt Question owner
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I got rid of searching.com by setting my start/new tab page to blank for a while and then set it back to the desired page and it worked. I believe that the searching.com got caught in restoring tabs on restarting. The link insertions seemed to stop when I restarted with all add ons disabled.

Thank you for your helpful and prompt assistance.