3

I definitely know how to change the home page in Internet Explorer (Tools -> Options -> General). The problem is, no matter what I put there, it never changes. Stop/restart Internet Explorer and the old home page is back.

I did some research to see if there is a registry key that I could tweak to get the home page to set properly. I changed the start page registry key and refreshed the view and the start page key (without even restarting regedit) was reset back to its original value.

Now I'm a little concerned. Maybe there's some virus I can't detect on my system?

Internet Explorer 9.0.8112.16421
Windows 7 Pro SP 1 x64
horace
  • 171
  • 1
  • 1
  • 9

5 Answers5

4

Ok, folks. Here's what I had to do:

  1. Go to the Control Panel -> Unistall programs and remove avg search tool: that's where it was, even though it was in my IE -> Tools -> Manage add-ons, I couldn't edit it because of the disabled 'remove' button when clicking on the avg search tool add-on. (also, since this was a clean new install of Windows 7, I'm not sure how it got there in the first place. Never installed/used AVG in my life.)
  2. Go to the registry and edit the HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\SearchScopes and delete the DefaultScope entry
  3. Now go to the Tools -> Options in IE and set the homepage to your heart's desire.

Simple as that.

To Lynn Crumbling for pointing out the AVG forum that led me to the regedit fix. But without removing the program from the Control Panel, this would simply do nothing, and come right back. Prolly a background process that manages the registry and crams the key back in place no matter what you do. Very clever, AVG.

<soapbox>

this "avg hijack" is a commonly known and very unpopular "feature". Lots of people hate this kind of behavior, and it comes down to people like those on the AVG forum and myself to fix it all by our lonesomes.

if I started writing software that behaves like this, I'd get lynched.

</soapbox>

Community
  • 1
horace
  • 171
  • 1
  • 1
  • 9
2

Check out this thread:

http://forums.avg.com/us-en/avg-forums?sec=thread&act=show&id=188650

Sounds like your issue.

Specifically, the one poster says: "Thanks to help from others on the forum, I found the small Settings link and disabled it successfully."

See if you can find it too.

This page discusses it more thoroughly: http://forums.avg.com/ww-en/avg-forums?sec=thread&act=show&id=188955#post_188955

A few users mentioned on forums they would like to disable the AVG default new tab page (which includes AVG secure search). This feature could be disabled by clicking the Settings link in lower-right corner of the newly opened tab (note the Settings link is not available on home page, it is present only on newly opened tabs) as seen on this screenshot. - Modify the Show AVG Secure Search Box on new tabs in the browser as you wish. - Click OK to save your configuration.

Lynn Crumbling
  • 233
1

With all the viruses and malware\spyware\adware floating around the Internet your problem could be caused by an infection. Some of these hijack your home page.

Do a complete virus scan and clean. Then run Malware Bytes or SpyBot S&D to make sure there isn't anything else (malware/spyware/adware) messing with your system. A free online scan at eSet just to make sure its all gone might be a good idea.

CharlieRB
  • 23,021
  • 6
  • 60
  • 107
1

In addition to viruses, many of the toolbars that you can download and install into IE will also hijack your homepage. Some will politely ask you if you want to reset it to their homepage and others will just do it without telling you. So if you added any toolbars, check their configuration options as they will often override IE's defaults with their own settings.

BBlake
  • 5,218
0

Check in your %systemroot%\system32\drivers\etc\hosts file to see if some odd network path has been set. A malicious entry in this file can route your browser through arbitrary sites...

BobT
  • 481