• It may be a Malware
• Remove the Unwanted Toolbar and Extensions

       *Disable or remove Add-ons 
       *Remove a toolbar that has taken over your Firefox search or home page

Sometimes a problem with Firefox may be a result of malware installed on your computer, that you may not be aware of.

You can try these free programs to scan for malware, which work with your existing antivirus software:

• Microsoft Safety Scanner
• MalwareBytes' Anti-Malware
• TDSSKiller - AntiRootkit Utility

Microsoft Security Essentials is a good permanent antivirus for Windows 7/Vista/XP if you don't already have one.

Further information can be found in the Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware article.

Did this fix your problems? Please report back to us!

Thank you for the reply, I have Security Essentials it did not find anything with yandex I also have and maintain the paid version of Malware bytes and it did not find yandex on my machine. The computer has been scanned numerous times, there is no sign of yandex physically on my machine and I never seen yandex until I downloaded and began using FF. Like I said when I type part of the url I am looking for this comes up immediately, I even tested this on IE9 which came loaded on this machine and yandex does not make an appearance, it is only with FF. I even set my files to show instead of hidden and searched them as well. This happened to me when I updated to 19.0 on my old laptop running XP and it is here again.

Is there an actual FF plug in or add that works that would block yandex from the FF broweser?

I just went through everything again and no tool bars, no add-ons, nothing pertaining to yandex.ru. I have nothing added other than what I get from FF's add on site.

Hello NeilW, if you have the yandex in the search bar, then if you click the down arrow next to the current search engine icon and select a new one, works ?

can you Removing a search engine (yandex in your pc) ?

thank you

Thanks for the response folks, I just checked and yandex is not listed in the search engine menu, google is number one on the list and looks like it is default. Again I do not know what is going on and I tested IE again this morning and nothing, no sign of yandex.ru. Cookies where checked and removed yandex again from the cookies on FireFox where it somehow keeps coming back.

Try the SearchReset add-on and check it again

thank you

Which search method are you using?

• 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)

If you do not keep changes after a restart then see:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Preferences_not_saved

ideato I installed that add on you recommended this morning and I have been monitoring it this evening and so far with only three searches like I was doing yandex never came back. I can also report when I did try it again with partial urls google brought up the sites instead of yandex which has made me a very happy person.

cor-el I am not using a add on bar, it is the main menu/url bar I use, not much for anything else to be honest and only run a few add ons and a few themes to spice up the look of things.

Keep the fingers crossed but so far so good, however I am still wondering how yandex got onto my machine to begin with, I downloaded my FF 19.0 from FF's site and like i said this machine just turned a week old and I was ready to scream over this.

Thanks Neil