How do I stop a page from attempting to load as my home page.
September 22, 2010 6:28 AM   Subscribe

Every time I load IE7 a page that I visited once months ago starts to load before my home page itself loads. How do I get it to go away?

Note: this is my work machine and I have to use IE. Please do not lecture me about my browser. I also will not be able to implement solutions requiring anything to be downloaded/installed.

I visited this site - http: //www.saibabalinks.org/tftd/tftd_archive.htm months ago to look for a quote. Now whenever IE7 loads, that site attempts to load first, before my actual designated home page loads. I have cleared my cache and everything else I can think of.

The only way to make it not load is to have my home page set to blank. I assume it's one of those charming pages that force your home page to be set to their own page.

How on earth do I clear it out of IE and make it stop appearing.
posted by winna to Technology (8 answers total)
 
I've never run into that problem, but you could try using CCleaner to get rid of your temp files. http://download.cnet.com/CCleaner/3000-2144_4-10547048.html.

Also, (and I might be biased, but) you should really upgrade to IE8.
posted by czytm at 6:47 AM on September 22, 2010


If your IT department mandates you have a crappy browser and a locked down user account, then your IT department gets the pleasure of fixing any problems with your machine. I can't think of a simple fix if you can't download or install software.
posted by Bodd at 6:53 AM on September 22, 2010


Best answer: I think it might be a problem with your shortcut itself. Try loading iexplore.exe directly from c:\program files\internet explorer\

If the issue does not persist there, take a good look at your IE7 shortcut to make sure the page isn't referenced there. Or perhaps create a new shortcut directly pointing to iexplore.exe.
posted by samsara at 6:55 AM on September 22, 2010


Best answer: Also, if its not a shortcut issue CCleaner is a good program above. There's also one particular to browser hijacking called Hijackthis. Depending on your rights (assuming you might not have local admin rights), you might not be able to clear browser hijacks without the help of your system administrator. These will typically show up at the very top of the scan list.
posted by samsara at 7:00 AM on September 22, 2010


Best answer: This is typical of having multiple homepages. If you go to Tools > Options, what does it say under Homepage?
posted by damn dirty ape at 7:09 AM on September 22, 2010


If it's not your computer and not your browser, it's probably also not your responsibility. Call IT.
posted by mhoye at 7:19 AM on September 22, 2010


Yeah, this sounds like something probably set itself as your default homepage. (Altho, tbh, I would expect that to open two tabs instead of loading one and then the other. )
posted by elizardbits at 7:20 AM on September 22, 2010


Response by poster: Since the response was so unanimous, I called my friend in IT and he brought over a thumbdrive with CCleaner. Now my computer is free of the weird page!

thanks to all!
posted by winna at 7:40 AM on September 22, 2010


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