I suggest checking for and cleaning up potential bad add-ons, hijackers, and ad injectors. I know this list seems long, but it's not that bad.

(1) Open the Windows Control Panel, Uninstall a Program. After the list loads, click the "Installed on" column heading to group the infections, I mean, additions, by date. This can help in smoking out undisclosed bundle items that snuck in with some software you agreed to install. Be suspicious of everything you do not recognize/remember, as malware often uses important or innocent sounding names to discourage you from removing it. Take out as much trash as possible here.

(2) Open Firefox's Add-ons page using either:

• Ctrl+Shift+a
• "3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons
• in the Windows "Run" dialog, type or paste
  firefox.exe "about:addons"

In the left column, click Plugins. Set nonessential and unrecognized plugins to "Never Activate".

In the left column, click Extensions. Then, if in doubt, disable (or Remove, if possible) unrecognized and unwanted extensions. Bear in mind that all extensions are optional, none come with Firefox, and you can learn more about them by checking their reviews on the Add-ons site.

Often a link will appear above at least one disabled extension to restart Firefox. You can complete your work on the tab and click one of the links as the last step.

Any improvement in your ability to control your Firefox home page and new tab page? I'll give some steps for that in a second reply.

(3) You can search for remaining issues with the scanning/cleaning tools listed in our support article: Troubleshoot Firefox issues caused by malware. These on-demand scanners are free and take considerable time to run. If they finish quickly and especially if they require payment, you may have a serious infection. I suggest the specialized forums listed in the article in that case.

Success?

Startup Page

These articles describe the steps to set your home page:

• Startup, home page, tabs, and download settings
• How to set the home page

If your home page appears correct on the Options page, does it work if you do either of these:

• Ctrl+n
• click the home button on the toolbar

If that does NOT work, you may still have an extension you need to remove.

If that works BUT you still have problems with your desktop Firefox icon, check whether it has been hijacked. right-click the icon, choose Properties, then the Shortcut tab. For a default installation on 64-bit Windows, the Target should be no more and no less than the following (including the quotation marks):

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe"

If there is anything after that or it points to a batch file or other intermediary process, please clean it up.

New Tab Page

Here's how you can change your new tab page:

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste newtab and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.newtab.url preference and enter your preferred page:

• Page thumbnails (default) => about:newtab
• Blank tab => about:blank
• Built-in Firefox home page => about:home
• Any other page => full URL to the page

Press Ctrl+t to open a new tab and verify that it worked. Fixed?

If problems persist, some potential diagnoses and remedies:

If Firefox won't let you edit this setting: you may have something called SearchProtect on your system. This needs to be removed from the Windows Control Panel. If the status says "locked" we will need to help you investigate an "autoconfig" file.

If Firefox lets you save your change but ignores it: you may still have an extension that needs to be removed.

If the change works during your session, but at the next startup is back to the unwanted page: you might have a user.js file in your personal Firefox settings folder (your Firefox profile folder). This article describes how to track down and remove the file: How to fix preferences that won't save.

Success?

Thank you for your quick response. I did receive it even though I had not yet verified my account. I am currently doing some scans as you suggested, Plugins & Extensions are OK. TDSSKiler found nothing Superantispyware came up clean MalwareBytes is still running but I suspect will find nothing I will also try Search and Destroy later The interesting part is that I don't see any specific signs of infection. However running SpyHunter 4 finds : 1 instance of Blekko 64 instances of Conduit Search/Toolbar 4 instances of Adware.Webconnect 54 instances of Foxstart.com It's a bit hard to believe that these are all false positives although I have not yet rummaged through the Registry to see if they are actually there. But I do have a Foxstart.com button on the Firefox toolbar which I have deleted.

You can use the SearchReset extension to reset some preferences to the default values.

• https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/searchreset/

Note that the SearchReset extension only runs once and then uninstalls automatically, so it won't show on the "Firefox > Add-ons" page (about:addons).

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar and search for prefs that refer to foxstart. You can reset user set (bold) prefs via the right-click context menu to the default value.

Malwarebytes scan didn't find anything although the cor-el advice above turned up 5 Foxstart.com entries which I have now reset to default. Here's hoping it stays that way. Thanks to everyone for their input.