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No home page, webpages don't load
My browser was working just fine this morning. About a half hour ago, I opened it, and the Loading icon just kept going back and forth but the home page does not load (it is still doing that now). A second tab had opened indicating a Mozilla security function but it also wouldn't load. That suggests to me that something Mozilla did resulted in the change. There is no longer a "home" icon showing, and when I looked at the settings, it shows an Acer page as the home page (instead of Google, which has been the home page). All of the extension icons I has are also now missing. What happened and how do I fix it? I would rather not uninstall and reinstall because I would lose all the bookmarks and log-ins. I tried restarting the computer and that did nothing.
Modified
Chosen solution
Could you test in Firefox's Safe/Troubleshoot Mode? In that mode, Firefox temporarily deactivates extensions, hardware acceleration, any userChrome.css/userContent.css files, and some other advanced features to help you assess whether these are causing the problem.
If Firefox is running:
You can restart Firefox in Safe/Troubleshoot Mode using either:
- "3-bar" menu button > Help > Troubleshoot Mode... (before Fx88: Restart with Add-ons Disabled)
- (menu bar) Help menu > Troubleshoot Mode... (before Fx88: Restart with Add-ons Disabled)
and OK the restart. A small dialog should appear. Click the Open button (before Fx88: "Start in Safe Mode" button).
If Firefox is not running:
Hold down the Shift key when starting Firefox. (On Mac, hold down the option/alt key instead of the Shift key.) A small dialog should appear. Click the Open button (before Fx88: "Start in Safe Mode" button).
Note: Don't use the Refresh without first reviewing this article to understand what will be deleted: Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings.
Any improvement?
Note: if you use Avast/AVG and got a quarantine notice about your prefs.js file, please let us know as we are not sure what else might be affected.
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Chosen Solution
Could you test in Firefox's Safe/Troubleshoot Mode? In that mode, Firefox temporarily deactivates extensions, hardware acceleration, any userChrome.css/userContent.css files, and some other advanced features to help you assess whether these are causing the problem.
If Firefox is running:
You can restart Firefox in Safe/Troubleshoot Mode using either:
- "3-bar" menu button > Help > Troubleshoot Mode... (before Fx88: Restart with Add-ons Disabled)
- (menu bar) Help menu > Troubleshoot Mode... (before Fx88: Restart with Add-ons Disabled)
and OK the restart. A small dialog should appear. Click the Open button (before Fx88: "Start in Safe Mode" button).
If Firefox is not running:
Hold down the Shift key when starting Firefox. (On Mac, hold down the option/alt key instead of the Shift key.) A small dialog should appear. Click the Open button (before Fx88: "Start in Safe Mode" button).
Note: Don't use the Refresh without first reviewing this article to understand what will be deleted: Refresh Firefox - reset add-ons and settings.
Any improvement?
Note: if you use Avast/AVG and got a quarantine notice about your prefs.js file, please let us know as we are not sure what else might be affected.
The shift-click didn't open a pop-up when Firefox opened, so since it was then open, I retried using the Help/Troubleshooting method, got a pop-up, clicked "okay". There was still no home page icon and no "landing page" but the loading icon was not going back-and forth trying in vain. I went to settings and noticed there was no home page set. I set it to Google, then closed and reopened outside of safe mode - it appears to have worked. The home page icon is back and loads fine. Hopefully this is a permanent fix. I wish I knew what caused it so that I could avoid it in the future and maybe that information might be useful (e.g., I noticed afterward that Malwarebytes had been running a scan in the background and so I can't be sure that software didn't do something funky).
Many thanks, jschher2000!! :-)