Tiscali have hijacked the home page

[Bern Oulli]

Mrs Bernoulli, in her independent way, has subscribed to Tiscali for her broadband connection. She duly installed everything and I am advised that it all went swimmingly. However, the default home page is, naturally, Tiscali. Mrs B would like to change it. No prob said I smugly. Tools/Internet Options/type the new home page/Apply. Job done in nanoseconds. Not so simple. The bit where the home page address is (where you type a more preferable one) is greyed out, as are the three buttons "use current", "use default", "use blank". So how the does one get round this? Operating system is Win XP + SP2 and of course IE6. Apart from that the whole thing is fine.

The Tiscali web-site does not help.

[James Vaughan]

Have you had a look at the Advanced Internet Options?

[terrain safe]

Try http://support.microsoft.com/?scid=kb;EN-US;Q320159 . Probably start from step 6. Have fun Pedro.

TS

[frostbite]

Alternatively, download and run Mozilla Firefox as your browser. When it first starts and asks you if it should import IE settings, say NO.

[Bern Oulli]

Thanks for the replies chaps.
JV, Yes but unless I missed something, I couldn't see anything relevent to the problem.
TS, been there and decided that it would be a last resort solution. Mrs B doesn't want too much "messing about" as she puts it.
Frostbite, brilliant bit of sideways thinking - it never occurred to me. Could be the answer. Certainly the easiest.
Thing is, I think it is very naughty of Tiscali to do that without apparently giving the customer any option. Ho hum. I'll see if Mrs B can be persuaded to use a different browser.

[BOAC]

Bern O - have you tried running 'hijackthis'? http://www.pprune.org/forums/showthread.php?t=176718. It might be worth running it and having a look.

I found a similar problem in a post elsewhere and the log produced had these entries:

R0 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page = http://www.tiscali.co.uk/
R1 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Default_Page_URL = http://www.tiscali.co.uk/
R0 - HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Start Page =
R1 - HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main,Window Title = Microsoft Internet Explorer provided by Tiscali

This tells you that Tiscali has taken over your start page (I guess you know that!) and then you can remove it.

PS Mrs B-O may 'come round' if you buy her some flowers..................

[Richard Spandit]

I think Microsoft anti-spyware has a browser restore feature. It's free to download and integrates nicely into XP.

[effortless]

In any event ditch IE. Download Firefox or Opera here, It's free, more secure than IE and easier to tune.

[rotorcraig]

A bit of googling found this...

http://www.mcse.ms/archive168-2005-7-1731727.html

Maybe this registry patch:

http://mvps.org/winhelp2002/RepairTabs.reg
1) Restores the missing Tabs in IE (usually spyware related)
2) Unlocks the grayed-out Home Page section
3) Removes the Administrator message in Internet Options

RC