You mean a new tab (Ctrl+t) and not a new window (Ctrl+n), right? You should be able to change this in Firefox's about:config preferences editor. Please note that add-ons can override this, so if your change is ignored, you should review your add-ons (particularly extensions).

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter. Click the button promising to be careful.

(2) In the filter box, type or paste newtab and pause while the list is filtered

(3) Double-click the browser.newtab.url preference and enter the desired value:

(i) Page thumbnails (default)

about:newtab

(ii) Blank tab

about:blank

(iii) Built-in Firefox home page

about:home

(iv) Any other page

full URL to the page

Press Ctrl+t to open a new tab and verify that it worked. Fixed?

Thank you so much! Piece of cake to fix! And back to thumbnails instead of startup page.

See also this article about the New Tab page (about:newtab):

• https://support.mozilla.org/kb/new-tab-page-show-hide-and-customize-top-sites

You can change the order of the boxes on the about:newtab page and drag an item to a different slot to pin it to that position or you can remove a website by clicking the close X to block that URL.
You can drag a bookmark or history item and drop them in a slot on the about:newtab page to pin them and have your own favorites sites showing.

Changes manually made on the about:newtab page are stored in the chromeappsstore.sqlite file in the Firefox Profile Folder under the pinnedLinks key and blockedLinks key (this will change to using prefs in Firefox 20; Bug 791447)

Have tried every option suggested. The only page that will display when I open a new tab is my home page. This happen after downloading and installing a freeware defrag program. I have uninstalled the program and everything related with the download but can't get thumbnails back no matter what I seem to do. Thanks for any help!

Hi singinwolf, when you reply in another thread, the forum doesn't collect your add-ons list. Could you go through your extensions and disable ALL nonessential or unrecognized extensions, restart Firefox, then try updating the newtab preference again?

orange Firefox button (or Tools menu) > Add-ons > Extensions category

You can check for problems with preferences and try to rename or delete the prefs.js file and possible numbered prefs-##.js files and a possible user.js file to reset all prefs to the default values.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Preferences_not_saved
• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Resetting_preferences

it works, i just make all default. I really want my new tab to be clean and not loading any site automatically. just for faster search, i just love to type what site i want to appear. great tutorial. thanks a lot.