Hello lotuspete, :

1. In the Location bar, type about:config and press Enter. The about:config "This might void your warranty!" warning page may appear.
2. Click I'll be careful, I promise! to continue to the about:config page.
3. copy from here browser.newtab.url and paste it in the search field
4. double-click on it and change the value to http://www.bing.com/
5. click on to save it, exit firefox and restart it.

thank you

The home page is just what opens when you click the Home icon on the toolbar, and when you start Firefox, provided that under Options → General you've set "When Firefox starts: Show my home page".

• Startup, home page, tabs, and download settings

When you open a new tab, you normally get a grid of tiles listing recently visited sites. (From Firefox 31 onward, there's also a search box, but it uses whatever search engine you've selected in the search bar on the navigation toolbar)

• Customize your Firefox New Tab page

1. Install Custom New Tab.
2. Open the Add-ons Manager (Ctrl+Shift+A; Mac: Command+Shift+A), then the Extensions category.
3. Next to Custom New Tab, click the Options button.
4. Enter whatever URL you want to open in each new tab, and make sure "Place focus in URL bar" is not checked.

Strictly speaking, you don't need the above add-on to choose what opens in each new tab. But Custom New Tab allows you to decide whether focus should go to the address bar. Without the add-on, it does, so you have to first click the search box on the web page before you can start typing your search query.

Thanks! I'll try that shortly...

There are other things that need your attention.

Your System Details list shows that you have a user.js file in the profile folder to initialize prefs each time Firefox starts.

The user.js file is only present if you or other software has created this file and normally it wouldn't be there. You can check its content with a plain text editor (right-click: Open with) if you didn't create this file yourself.

The user.js file is read each time Firefox is started and initializes preferences to the value specified in this file, so preferences set via user.js can only be changed temporarily for the current session.

Delete a possible user.js file and numbered prefs-##.js files and rename (or delete) the prefs.js file to reset all prefs to the default value including prefs set via user.js and prefs that are no longer supported in the current Firefox release.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Preferences_not_saved

You can use this button to go to the currently used Firefox profile folder:

• Help > Troubleshooting Information > Profile Directory: Show Folder (Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder)
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox

Thank you. All that appears to be in the "user.js file" is this: user_pref("network.proxy.type", 0);

I don't know what that is but I don't think is a problem is it?

Hi lotuspete

All that appears to be in the "user.js file" is this: user_pref("network.proxy.type", 0);

it is not a problem for that issue.

you have set browser.newtab.url: http://www.google.com/firefox , see my first reply above.

thank you

Do a malware check with several malware scanning programs on the Windows computer.
Please scan with all programs because each program detects different malware.
All these programs have free versions.

Make sure that you update each program to get the latest version of their databases before doing a scan.

• Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware:
  http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php
• AdwCleaner:
  http://www.bleepingcomputer.com/download/adwcleaner/
  http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/Removal-Tools/AdwCleaner.shtml
• SuperAntispyware:
  http://www.superantispyware.com/
• Microsoft Safety Scanner:
  http://www.microsoft.com/security/scanner/en-us/default.aspx
• Windows Defender:
  http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/using-defender
• Spybot Search & Destroy:
  http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index.html
• Kasperky Free Security Scan:
  http://www.kaspersky.com/security-scan

You can also do a check for a rootkit infection with TDSSKiller.

• Anti-rootkit utility TDSSKiller:
  http://support.kaspersky.com/5350?el=88446

See also:

• "Spyware on Windows": http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popups_not_blocked