The Firefox Start page has changed; it is no longer just a custom-branded page on Google.com. If Google is preferred, it might be simplest just to make Google the home page. (I don't know whether there is a way to modify the built-in start page.)

This is what it actually looks like, I have the same setup on my computer , on my computer with Windows 7 everything comes up on the start page just fine.. I am thinking either it is a permission thing not allowing the full page to draw all of the graphics and other items on the working start page. Or there is something just not turned on or set correctly but as you can see from the photo I have just added this is the result of the start page...

That is how the about:home page is supposed to look. So there is nothing wrong.

As posted above by jscher2000, you can set another page as your home page.
See:

• How to set the home page

If you view the picture, you can see several things are missing... Ok well, the friend of mine is not computer power user savvy, So , somehow in Firefox 4.0.1 TOOLS/OPTIONS/GENERAL tab, the home page got removed... I replaced what I saw on my computer as homepage for Firefox, copied it put it on thumbnail and went over to the friends with the thumbnail, coped and pasted the homepage into the space where it asked it... this is the following

http://en-US.start3.mozilla.com/firefox?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:officia

Case closed, thanks for your support..