Sonya said:
Unwanted home page (searchdot.net) keeps coming up as my
home page. I have
reset it to msn.com through Tools/Internet Options, I
have emptied the "Cookies" folder, I have emptied
the "Temporary Internet Files Folder", I have deleted it
from the "Favorites" folder, I have emptied the "Recycle
Bin", and yet it still keeps returning the next time I
restart my computer.
I downloaded adaware/spyware and thought that would solve
the problem and I think my computer is ok with that now,
but the homepage still changes back to something I didn't
set it at. What can I do? Please Help!
Some ISP's provide a customised version of IE. Some Web pages will also
reset your home page and do this. One of the customisations they might make
is to disable the ability to change the home page, so that you are forced to
use their home page. You can re-enable this by making a small change in the
Windows registry.
In Regedit, navigate to this key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control
Panel
In the right-hand pane, right-click the "HomePage" value, then select
Modify. Change it to: 00 00 00 00
Also change either or these to zero 0 instead of 1 if present:
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explo
rer] - DWORD "NoSetHomePage"=dword:00000001
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet
Explorer\Restrictions] - DWORD "NoSetHomePage"=dword:00000001
If you don't have this key, browse to:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
and in the right hand pane, double click "Local Page" and set equal to
"C:\WINDOWS\System\blank.htm" (no quotes) which will hopefully set your Home
Page to blank and then allow you to subsequently modify it using Internet
Options.
Exit regedit and reboot.
When you reboot, you should be able to change the home page again.
Some pages will also download a program which keeps changing it back. Go to
Start | Run and type:
msconfig
and press <Enter> or click OK. Go to the Startup tab.
See if you can identify any suspicious programs. If you can, uncheck it, If
you can't, change the home page to what you want and then uncheck one and
then reboot. Try IE. If the Web page changed, change it back and then try
msconfig again, rechecking the last one and unchecking the next. Keep doing
this until you find the culprit.
