The Home page is nothing more than the web page that automatically opens when you launch your web browser or hit the Home button in that browser.
Now, I’m going to assume that you’ve actually set this page to what you want it to be. If you haven’t set this up, I can’t really give you the steps as they’re different for each browser program. (Though How do I change my browser home page back to what I want? has instructions for a couple.)
For our purposes here, let’s say that you already set the homepage, but something is changing it. There are a couple of reasons why this might be happening.
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Reason #1: Your security software changed it.
Believe it or not, your security software could be the culprit. Many anti-spyware tools have built-in protection to prevent malicious software from changing the homepage. If you set the homepage after you installed your security software, it may have prevented you from changing the homepage.
Check the settings in your anti-malware package relating to browser home page protection. It might have been protecting you … from you!
Reason #2: Malware did it.
The most common reason is simply that there is malware on your machine that maliciously resets your homepage to something else every time you change it. There are variants on this these involving everything from getting truly malicious software onto your machine to (more or less) benignly redirecting you to other sites from which the malware authors make money.
Regardless of why, if malware is the cause, then you’ll want to do two things.
- Remove that malware. Check out my “How do I remove malware?” article. The steps here range from simple to fairly extreme. Hopefully you’ll not have to go to the extreme end to remove the malware. Ultimately, running a program like Malwarebytes will usually clear this issue up pretty quickly.
- Make sure that you’re running security software to prevent this kind of malicious behavior in the first place.
If you’re not sure what to use, I recommend that you read “What security software do you recommend?” These tools should prevent this from happening in the future. But generally, if your browser Home page keeps getting reset to something else, then it’s usually a sign of malicious software on your machine. Treating it like malware and removing it are the best things to do.
There is actually a third reason, though it ‘almost’ fits into reason 2.
I use a toolbar from a specific company that periodically updates itself. When it does update, it changes my Homepage to that of the company. It does this without my consent or knowledge (apart from when i next start my browser). Because I use the toolbar, I don’t want to uninstall it, but it does get annoying (especially because it has recently started producing ‘dialog boxes’ from the taskbar).
It would be nice to know how to stop it changing my Homepage, but I can live with it for now.
There are also web pages that want to become your start up page. Sometimes they are not always obvious about it when they get you to tell them it is OK.
Hi Leo.
Have you any comments specific to the free “keepvid” software and its potential to changes a user’s home page to ask.com ? I have never had an issue but someone to whome I recommended the applet had experienced a home page lock down.
My home page google..but it always open http://istart.webssearches.com/?type=hppp&ts=1414177171&from=irs&uid=WDCXWD2500BEVT-22A23T0_WD-WX21A70P2980P2980
What is it? how to get reed of it ? Thanks
If the advice in this article don’t work for you, you might have malware which is changing it back. These article might help:
http://askleo.com/how-do-i-keep-my-browser-from-being-hijacked/
http://askleo.com/how-do-i-remove-pups-foistware-drive-bys-toolbars-and-other-annoying-things-i-never-wanted/
I had facebook as my homepage, but when I get ready to comeback online it has changed back to google. I like google but want facebook to be my homepage, any suggestions Leo?
This article, pretty much covers all of the suggestions Leo has on the subject.
When I restart my comp, it comes up google and that is not my home page, what do I do to get rid of it? thanks I am new at this.
I recently installed the ASK toolbar. Then I uninstalled it.
Now, every time I open my Firefox browser, ASK installs itself as my homepage. What a PITA!
It’s not malware, so how do I get it to stop? A search reveals that there’s nothing on my system with ASK in its name.
It’s probably not reseting itself as you home page each time – it was probably set to your home page once and not changed thereafter. You should just be able to set your home page to what you want: https://askleo.com/how_do_i_change_my_browser_home_page_back_to_what_i_want/
No, you are wrong. Ask changes my homepage EVERYTIME. I change it back and the next time I open my browser, it has been changed again. It is very frustrating.
Try AdwCleaner and Malwarebytes. They’ve worked for me in similar situations.
https://askleo.com/how-do-i-remove-pups-foistware-drive-bys-toolbars-and-other-annoying-things-i-never-wanted/
OK, so ASK not being a malware came as a surprise to me…Check our SIRS (Should i Remove it) site which is an awesome resource to know is something a malware or not. And i personally got rid of ASK with reasoncoresecurity.com. Might not be the most superior out there, but very affordable, quick and keeps my PC clean
Once it happened to chrome, I tried all solutions but to no avail.
Then out of frustration I thought of searching the whole chrome program folder to search the shitty malware or whatever, but then I decided to check the chrome application’s properties first, so I right-clicked it and checked, and EUREKA!! I found the real culprit, the site that was opening on startup had embedded itself in the ‘Target’ !! example: let the page that opened on startup be http://www.xyz.abc (or anything), the ‘Target’ was set as “C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe”” http://www.xyz.abc ” , so I just deleted that part(it now looked like this- “C:\Program Files\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe” ) , and it solved the problem.
Many times I get problems like these on my pc , and the solutions that I find after so much time wasting really surprise me because the are so simple and nothing that I would had ever imagined. Someday I really plan to make an entire blog on these things.
Thanks I got the resolution with this ..just deleting target