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

since V 41 very often the standard firefox start window is replaced by a crude yahoo one. I can reset it by ordering "stadard window", this is not kept always!?

more options

If resetted manually to 'standard' Start Window, but this option is not securely kept. After a few starts the goofy yahoo starting screen is coming again. In 'about:config' several new yahoo entries are then built - removing them is no help... Also all my Adware cleaners did not help. I'm convinced that it's not Mozilla-fault. So Somebody is sneaking in since V41 (!?) Since i want to decide freely which search enginge i want to use in a session, there is no use of a specified yahoo page for me without any coice.

how can I get rid of the yahoo StartWindow?

PS

Same thing happens at my several Win 7 64 installations, and also at my Win 8.1.

If resetted manually to 'standard' Start Window, but this option is not securely kept. After a few starts the goofy yahoo starting screen is coming again. In 'about:config' several new yahoo entries are then built - removing them is no help... Also all my Adware cleaners did not help. I'm convinced that it's not Mozilla-fault. So Somebody is sneaking in since V41 (!?) Since i want to decide freely which search enginge i want to use in a session, there is no use of a specified yahoo page for me without any coice. how can I get rid of the yahoo StartWindow? PS Same thing happens at my several Win 7 64 installations, and also at my Win 8.1.

All Replies (1)

more options

This sounds like the work of a bad add-on. Here's my suggested procedure for tracking down and cleaning up bad add-ons, hijackers, and ad injectors. I know it seems long, but it's not that bad.

(1) Open the Windows Control Panel, Uninstall a Program. After the list loads, click the "Installed on" column heading to group the infections, I mean, additions, by date. This can help in smoking out undisclosed bundle items that snuck in with some software you agreed to install. Be suspicious of everything you do not recognize/remember, as malware often uses important or innocent sounding names to discourage you from removing it. Take out as much trash as possible here.

(2) Open Firefox's Add-ons page using either:

  • Ctrl+Shift+a
  • "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons
  • in the Windows "Run" dialog, type or paste
    firefox.exe "about:addons"

In the left column, click Plugins. Set nonessential and unrecognized plugins to "Never Activate".

In the left column, click Extensions. Then, if in doubt, disable (or Remove, if possible) unrecognized and unwanted extensions. Bear in mind that all extensions are optional, none come with Firefox, and you can learn more about them by checking their reviews on the Add-ons site.

Often a link will appear above at least one disabled extension to restart Firefox. You can complete your work on the tab and click one of the links as the last step.

Any improvement?

(3) You can search for remaining issues with the scanning/cleaning tools listed in our support article: Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware. These on-demand scanners are free and take considerable time to run. If they finish quickly and especially if they require payment, you may have a serious infection. I suggest the specialized forums listed in the article in that case.

Success?


In your Question Details > More System Details, your Firefox "user agent" string is rather peculiar:

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:41.0 () Gecko/20100101 Firefox/41.0 ( anonymized by Abelssoft 82863387

I think that is the "AntiBrowserSpy" program advertising itself, which is totally obnoxious. But it might not be harmful.