Hijacked home pages!

I've been encountering situations where a browser comes up with unexpected home pages or, when searching, presents web sites or aggressive sales window popups, even when the browser supposedly has its popup blocker turned on.  Some things you can do to fix this:

• Go to Tools.(Internet) Options and find the place where you can enter the Home url.  In both IE and Firefox the field  is on the General Tab.  The value there may be set to the undesired web page.  Change the entry to the url (starts with http:// or https://) you want.  Click Apply and then OK.  When you exit, exit using the File.Exit option rather than clicking on the red x, just to make sure you save the option.  
• In Firefox, type about:config in the browser's address field.  You'll get a warning about making changes; click "I'll be careful."  The list you get will be a bunch of lines of settings.  Near the middle is the setting keyword.url.  The value should be your home page.  If it isn't, then right click on the value and select "modify" from the list of actions.  Type the home page you want in the field.  Close the tab.
• Also look for the setting "network.proxy.no_proxies_on;"  The value should be exactly localhost,127.0.0.1 unless you are really sophisticated in your use of the browser.  Anything else is suspicious. 
• Go to Control Panel and double left click on the "Internet Options" icon.  Find the "Connections" tab.  Left mouse click the "Lan Settings" button.  In the Automatic configuration section make sure the "Automatically detect settings" box is checked.  That should be the only box checked on that tab.

If these don't work, then you've got a problem.  Give me a call.