Tired of webpages or software changing your Internet Explorer home page from about:blank or your favorite website such as MalekTips.Com <grin>? There are several ways to help secure Internet Explorer's homepage from being changed.

Before performing any of these techniques, be sure to change the home page to what you desire, close Internet Explorer, then reopen it to ensure the home page is what you set. If the homepage changed again, you may have spyware / adware on your machine that must be disabled and/or removed.

Once the hompage is set to what you desire, if you are comfortable editing the Registry, the following modification will prevent the Home Page in Internet Explorer from being changed:

1. Navigate to [[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\
Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\]
2. Create a new DWORD value called Homepage.
3. Give it a value of 1.
4. Close the Registry Editor.
5. Restart Internet Explorer.

Or, you can try the following anti-spyware software that has options to lock the Internet Explorer Home Page:

SpywareBlaster: - http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html

(instructions current as of v3.2):

1. Click "Tools".
2. Select the "Misc. IE Settings" tab.
3. Check "Disable the IE Home Page settings area in the Internet Tools Control Panel".
4. Close SpywareBlaster.

SpyBot Search and Destroy - http://www.spybot.info

(instructions as of v1.3):

1. Select "Mode" - "Advanced".
2. Click "Tools" in the left pane.
3. Click "IE tweaks" in the right pane.
4. Check "Lock IE start page setting against user changes (current user)".
5. Close SpyBot.

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