NS said:
On my windows 98 SE home machine recently on the Internet options ->
General page Home page section "Use current", "Use Default" and "Use
Blank" buttons grayed out, if I go to the options page from the
control panel. Are there any registry keys that control access to
these buttons?
Thanks in advance for your help.
From
http://www.fjsmjs.com/IE/homepage.htm
If you have SpyBot S&D installed, go to the "Immunize" section.
Is "Lock IE Start Page Settings" ticked?
If so, uncheck it.
If that is not the problem, get and run these programs (if you test after
each one you can stop when the problem is gone):
Ad-Aware:
http://www.lavasoftusa.com
Once installed make sure to update via online before scanning!
and
Spybot - Search & Destroy -
http://security.kolla.de/
http://security.kolla.de/index.php?lang=en&page=download
http://spybot.eon.net.au/
http://www.tomcoyote.org/SPYBOT/
Once installed make sure to update via online before scanning!
and
BHO Demon:
http://www.spywareinfo.com/downloads/bhod/
Until the problem is solved.
If you still have problems, some ISP's provide a customized version of IE.
Some Web pages will also reset your home page and do this. One of the
customizations they might make is to disable the ability to change the home
page, so that you are forced to use their home page. You can re-enable this
by making a small change in the Windows registry.
In 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\Explo
rer] - 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.
Some pages will also download a program which keeps changing it back. Go to
Start | Run and type:
msconfig
and press <Enter> or click OK. Go to the Startup tab.
See if you can identify any suspicious programs. If you can, uncheck it, If
you can't, change the home page to what you want and then uncheck one and
then reboot. Try IE. If the Web page changed, change it back and then try
msconfig again, rechecking the last one and unchecking the next. Keep doing
this until you find the culprit.
You might also want to look at this little program. I haven't tried it, but
I've read encouraging reports:
http://www.pjwalczak.com/spguard/