Can't Change Home Page

Hi,
I don't know for sure but it sounds as if Dell is using hardwired spam, to always force you to their website.

Try using Firefox instead of IE, its free.

Dell ship some of their computers with McAfee antivirus on it (at least the one this morning did). The later antivirus versions have firewall and spam protection in it. Part of this is Home Page Protection which will prevent users from changing the home page.

Look at your antivirus/firewall/antispam program and see what other evils they protect you from. Symantec's latest offering turns off SMB by default, so registering a PC to a domain is difficult. I dont know what you have, so it is hard to be more specific.

Try unchecking everything in "msconfig" except your spyware, AV and Firewall apps and save (incase there is a program loading at startup which causes this behavior). Reboot into Safe Mode, use the Administrator account (not your personal admin account) and try your registry editing again.

Point value changed by question poster.

Try changing the home page via group policy (Start | Run | gpedit.msc

Look under User Configuration | Windows Settings | Internet Explorer Maintenance | URLs | Important URL's

This oughta do it.

have u checked to see if have spyware.. i would recommend.. spybot search and destroy

great little program.. it should also let u change it from there..

Please make sure your browser has not been hijacked. Have you run the windows updates to be fully patched?
Go to the Web page you want to make your home page.
On the Internet Explorer Tools menu, click Internet Options.
In the Internet Options box, on the General tab, click the Use Current button.
Click OK.

Had the same problem with some new Dells. Search on Dell turned up this:
http://naut.homestead.com/files/locked/locked.html#Pre-set
I opened an IE session:
1. Tools
2. Manage Add-Ons
3. Disabled all Google
Close and restart IE.

Was subsequently able to modify my home page.

Hope this helps.