HomePage in IE cannot be changed

Some spywares may download a program which keeps changing Internet Explorer homepage to its assigned websites.

Download AutoRuns for Windows v9.32
By Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell
Published: July 24, 2008
Download Autoruns and Autorunsc (490 KB)

Control what to include or exclude in your startup programs appear at the desktop system tray.
Too many startups slow down booting. Help to detect malwares startup by allowing user to disable & delete, best at safe mode

Configure in Autoruns toolbar\Options to check all 3 boxes.
This will coloured all safe results which does not require attentions. Narrow to general check in Logon and Internet Explorer tabs. The former allows you to disable/delete any programs startup & the later allows you to control the Browser Help Objects(BHO). Less or no undesirable BHO speeds up your surfing in Internet Explorer.

See if you can identify any suspicious programs with sysinternal autoruns freeware. If you can, uncheck it & delete it.

Utilise Security Task Manager:
The Security Task Manager recognizes also rootkits, virtual driver software, services, BHO and other processes hidden from the Windows task manager.SpyProtector kill Windows processes, find trojans and keylogger.

Go to Start and in Run type Regedit, navigate to this key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel In the right-hand pane, right-click the "HomePage" value, then select Modify. Change it to: 00 00 00 00 Also change either or these to zero 0 instead of 1 if present: [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\Explorer] - DWORD "NoSetHomePage"=dword:00000001 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Restrictions] - DWORD "NoSetHomePage"=dword:00000001 If you don't have this key, browse to: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main and in the right hand pane, double click "Local Page" and set equal to "C:\WINDOWS\System\blank.htm" (no quotes) which will hopefully set your Home Page to blank and then allow you to subsequently modify it using Internet Options. Exit regedit and reboot. When you reboot, you should be able to change the home page again.

StartPage Guard 2.5 Latest Version: 2.52 Platform: Windows 9x, ME, NT 4.0, 2K, XP Size: 417 Kb Status: Freeware click here to download THE PROGRAM StartPage Guard (SPG) protects your PC from cyberscam, by detecting and preventing any unauthorized changes to your internet browser's Start and Search pages. It is also capable of removing automatically most of known "invaders". BACKGROUND Malicious programs (viruses, trojans, backdoors, etc.) sometime change the StartPage to "gain the ground". Spywares use this way to invade user's privacy by tracking destinations which user visited, and collecting personal information. In some cases this activity may be totally transparent to the user. But most often this is just plain annoyance when start page is changed without asking user's permission. SPG effectively deals with all this problems, making surfing the net safer, more secure, and by reducing frustaration - more fun. FEATURES * ALWAYS remember user-selected StartPage. * ALWAYS remember user-selected SearchPage settings. * Alerts if start or search page has been changed. * Detects and reports transparent-redirect attempts. * Can automatically revert to user-selected start and search page without user interaction. * Deals with disabled (grayed) set-startpage-address buttons on IE. * Simple and user friendly interface. * Includes useful HELP (please read at least once). * Whole program is a single, file, written in C++. * Install / uninstall included.

See also 3) EFix - General purpose fix for Internet Explorer

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