can not change home page

I hope that this is in the right forum.

For some reason my home page has changed to the following: URL="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=54843 ".

When I go to Tools - Internet Options - General, I can manually change the home page to anything I want. It will show as being changed. When I close internet explorer and reopen the above link still loads.

I have run both Ad-aware and Sypbot, both in normal and safe modes. I have run ATF Cleaner in both modes several times until it doesn't delete any more. I have run Kaspersky 7.0 on line scan.

I have run HiJackThis. There was a line in the log that mentioned the URL as a first home page. I deleted this but the problem still exists.

I have searched the forums here and the links to microsoft but none seem to work.

Thanks - Chris

 

Navigate to the page you want as your home page
click tools
click internet options
under the box that shows your home page click the "use current" button
click apply
click ok

If that hasn't been working for you try this

Navigate to the page you want to have as your home page.
Click the down arrow next to the "home icon" on the menu bar
click "add or change home page "
click the radio buton next to "use this page as your only home page "
click yes
this should set your home page to the page you are on.

navigate to another page then click on the home icon, it should take you "home "

Mitch

 

still not quite right

Thanks Mitch. I had totally forgotten about the home icon on the toolbar.

The first part of your suggestion I had already tried, without success.

As for the second part of your suggestion. I set my home page to a new site, then went to a different site. Clicking on the home icon will then take me to the 'home' site.

However when I open a new internet explorer window it still goes to http://www.microsoft.com/windows/downloads/ie/getitnow.mspx. It actually goes to another website first but it changes to fast for me to see what the URL is. If I click on the home icon it will take me to the home site. I even tried restarting the computer with out success.

Internet Explorer is version: 7.0.5730.13.
OS is XP with SP3.

Chris

 

Three things to try.

If you have Spybot Search and Destroy installed, it may be interferring with resetting the home page.

1. Open Spybot in Advanced Mode, go to Tools> IE Tweaks uncheck the Miscellaneous Locks. If you are running Teatimer, it could also be blocking this change.

or:

Reset Internet Explorer

2. Click tools, internet properties, advanced tab, at the bottom is a button to reset under "reset Internet Explorer Setting" click on that, apply, ok.
Go to your home page.
set the home page
Close Internet Explorer
try again.

or:

3. You may have a malfunctioning install of IE7. Uninstall IE7 (you will revert to IE6). Go to this link to download new IE7 and reinstall.

Try the easiest ones first before you go the uninstall/reinstall route.

If none of these work, I would suspect malware unless someone else has any ideas. for malware, read this and post logs in Malware and Virus Removal forum.

Mitch

 

Guess I should have read a little closer, the "if" shows I probably didn't.

 

Spybot seems to be causing the problem.

Following Mitch's advice I disabled Tea Timer. There are no checks showing in the IE Tweaks section of Spybot. I then changed the homepage. When I restarted the computer and opened Internet Explorer the home page was correct.

Tonight when I started my computer the homepage was correct. I then restarted Spybot Tea Timer. When I opened Internet Explorer the homepage was back to the URL listed above.

For now I have disabled Spybot Tea Timer and enabled Windows Defender's real-time scaning.

I just checked for new updates for Spybot and there were none.

I found the fourm web page for Spybot and will have a look through it.

Chris

 

Teatimer has a memory. If you told it once to deny acces to a change, it will always deny. I don't use teatimer so I will have to mill about spybot to see where, if at all, you can clear its memory.

But, without teatimer it appears to be working for you. Glad to here it.

 

Hi Mitch:

Thank you for all your help.

Chris