Home Page

Posted by Lisa Blanc on April 8, 2014

What is Home Page?

Home page or home tab is your initial web page that is opened whenever you access your Internet browser. For the most part, the main internet browsers come with default home pages that you can change later on. Some of them may have affiliated search engines as their default home pages (like bing.com or google.com) or some may come with blank tab that later on, depending on your browsing history, displays your most often visited or your most recently closed websites. Either way, homepage is an important part of internet browsing, and it is quite often targeted by potential computer security threats.

Why does my home page get changed?

Disregarding which browser is set as your default one, all of us may face the potential risk of being infected by a browser hijacker. Browser hijackers are computer infections that modify browser settings without our permission. However, browser hijackers are not the only ones that modify default homepage or home tab. Some potentially unwanted applications such as browser extensions, toolbars and even adware can modify browser settings as well.

There are a lot of applications that are known to change browser settings and users might be absolutely oblivious about it. For example: Babylon, FunMoods, MyStart.incredibar.com, search.conduit.com, Delta Search, Qvo6, Webssearches and so on and so forth.

Some of these programs and infections can be removed easily, but some are very resistant and even change your browser shortcut’s target line in order to keep your browser settings changed.

Why is my home page important?

If your home page gets modified by a computer infection or a potentially unwanted application, there is a high chance that sooner or later you will get exposed to a potentially dangerous content via third party websites, commercial ads or outgoing links. Your homepage and home tab are modified, because adware, browser hijackers and other applications need to generate financial revenue to its authors. In order to generate the money you get redirect back and forth to affiliated websites. This way you help them increase the traffic, you get to participate in shady online marketing schemes and in the most severe cases you might also get infected with malware.

Therefore, as you can see, your homepage settings are an important indicator of your computer’s system security. If your homepage or home tab got changed without your permission, it is the first sign that something is off, and you need to restore your browser settings immediately.

How to restore my home page?

There are several ways to restore your browser settings and it mostly depends on how they were modified. If your browser settings were changed by a potentially unwanted application, you will need to uninstall the application via Control Panel and then change your browser settings manually. You can also use the reset function in your browser settings which allows you to restore the settings to default. However, some users may not want to use this function, because it deletes all the other personal settings you have set in the course of time.

Eventually, in case your home page has been hijacked by a dangerous infection, you may also need to change your Target line settings as well. Thus, depending on the situation you may use one of the three possible ways to restore your browser settings. Naturally, a full system scan with SpyHunter free scanner or any other similar application is also highly recommended, because this way you will be able to see whether there are any other potentially dangerous files left in your system. For more information, please do not hesitate to leave us a comment below.

Remove potentially unwanted programs

Windows 8

  1. Move mouse cursor to the bottom right of the screen.
  2. Click Settings on Charm bar and go to Control Panel.
  3. Open Uninstall a program and remove unwanted applications.

Windows Vista & Windows 7

  1. Open Start menu and click Control panel.
  2. Go to Uninstall a program and remove unwanted applications.

Windows XP

  1. Click Start menu button and navigate to Control panel.
  2. Access Add or remove programs and uninstall unwanted applications.

Change your browser settings manually

Internet Explorer

  1. Press Alt+X and click Internet options.
  2. Open General tab and change your home page address. Click OK.
  3. Press Alt+X again and click Manage add-ons.
  4. Remove all the unwanted extensions from Toolbars and Extensions.
  5. Click Search providers on the left pane.
  6. Set a new default search engine and remove unwanted search provider. Click Close.

Mozilla Firefox

  1. Click the search engine icon on the left of search box (top right corner).
  2. Select Manage search engines from drop-down menu.
  3. Remove unwanted search provider and press OK.
  4. Click Firefox button and go to Options.
  5. Under General tab change your default home page.
  6. Make sure that “Show my home page” is selected next to When Firefox starts. Click OK.
  7. Press Firefox button again and go to Add-ons.
  8. Remove unwanted add-ons from Extensions and restart browser.

Google Chrome

  1. Press Alt+F and go to Tools. Click Extensions.
  2. Remove unwanted add-ons and press Settings on the left.
  3. Select Open a specific page or set of pages under On startup.
  4. Click Set pages, remove unwanted domain and enter a new home page address. Click OK.
  5. Under Appearance, click Change next to Show Home button.
  6. Delete unwanted domain, enter a new home page address and click OK.
  7. Select Manage search engines under Search.
  8. Set a new default search engine, delete unwanted search provider and click Done.

Reset your browser settings to default

Internet Explorer

  1. Press Alt+X and click Internet options.
  2. Open Advanced tab and click Reset.
  3. Mark Delete personal settings option and press Reset.
  4. Click Close.

Mozilla Firefox

  1. Press Firefox button and navigate to Help.
  2. Click Troubleshooting information.
  3. Press Reset Firefox at the top right of a new tab.
  4. When a pop-up box appears, click Reset Firefox again.
  5. Press Finish.

Google Chrome

  1. Press Alt+F and click Settings.
  2. Scroll and click Show advanced settings.
  3. Scroll down to Reset browser settings.
  4. Click Reset browser settings and then press Reset.

How to change shortcut Target

  1. Right-click your browser’s shortcut (if the program is pinned to your taskbar, right-click it, and then right-click its name again).
  2. Click Properties and open Shortcut tab.
  3. Go to Target line and delete the text that is OUTSIDE of quotation marks “ “.
  4. Press OK.
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