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Lenovo Updates reset Browser Homepage

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 7:24 pm
by Ken Fox
I'm not sure whether it is System Update, or whether it is particular updates (my impression is the former) appears to reset the homepage on at least the Firefox browser to "Lenovo Live."

I have to be honest and say that this really pi**es me off. What business is it of Lenovo what I choose to set as my home page? If I wanted Lenovo Live as my homepage, I would have set it to that.

I can't imagine that I am the only person who has experienced this annoyance.

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 7:47 pm
by jdhurst
Access Connections has a setting deep inside that does that. Select your connection, edit it, and look through all the settings. You will find a homepage setting. Uncheck it or set it to your own home page. I do the latter. ... JDH

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 7:52 pm
by rkawakami
If you are using Access Connections to manage your network connection(s) then I suppose it's possible that any updates you download (especially AC) may reset the home page. If you are not using AC, then that is surprising.

Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2008 11:58 pm
by Ken Fox
jdhurst wrote:Access Connections has a setting deep inside that does that. Select your connection, edit it, and look through all the settings. You will find a homepage setting. Uncheck it or set it to your own home page. I do the latter. ... JDH
The option "Override Home Page" is and always was UNCHECKED, and remains so. Since it is unchecked, what would be placed there in the address line should not matter.

What has happened is that after using System Update, the home page address in Firefox has been intentionally changed from my preference to "lenovo live." This is not accidental and I assure you that I am not the only person who has had this happen, as it seems very much intentional on the part of lenovo. There is no other plausible explanation.

Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 12:05 am
by Ken Fox
rkawakami wrote:If you are using Access Connections to manage your network connection(s) then I suppose it's possible that any updates you download (especially AC) may reset the home page. If you are not using AC, then that is surprising.
I am using AC at the moment, as I've not had serious problems with it in about 6 months. System Update has changed the listed homepage preference on Firefox to Lenovo Live on 6 notebooks of mine, so far. This is without doubt intentional; there is no other plausible explanation as all of my notebooks have a specific home page set up manually, and it has been changed after updating.

Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 2:09 pm
by davidspalding
You might try running some spybot or other security software that manages changes in the Registry, and see if it picks that up.

Q: Does it also change it for IE?

It's truly disappointing if Lenovo has joined the ranks of software developers who secretly manipulate users' other software settings without permission or disclosure. THAT in my book ... is malware behavior, regardless of the justification.

BTW, I presume you've verified that it actually is changing the default home page setting, not just loading the page once at runtime, as Firefox does, when you update.

Posted: Sun Jun 15, 2008 4:24 pm
by jdhurst
Another possiblity (and I forget the exact steps I used to get rid of it), but on newer machines I serviced, Lenovo set multiple home pages to force multiple tabs. I had to get rid of all of them.
... JDH