■ Location Bar ( Address Bar)

• This uses Google by default for both keyword search and domain guessing you will need to reset within the "about.config" preferences you should need to read: Location bar search

■ Search Bar

• I think that may also have google by default

1. click the down arrow next to the icon
2. click manage search engines

Sorry i don't understand that. I want Google as my default but i seems to be showing as Yahoo? in my address bar. can yo give me step by step insturctions on what to do ? thanks you

Is the pref keyword.URL set to Google?

Start Firefox in Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode to check if one of the add-ons is causing the problem (switch to the DEFAULT theme: Tools > Add-ons > Themes).

• Don't make any changes on the Safe mode start window.

See:

• Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems

sorry i don't understand what "pref keyword.URL" is?

Did you read the hyperlinked articles? (The light blue words in postings are hyperlinks that you should click on).
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Location%20bar%20search
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keyword.URL
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Safe%20Mode
https://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Troubleshooting%20extensions%20and%20themes

hi

in my about:config the keyword URl says http://uk.search.yahoo.com/search?fr=mcafee&p

i tried modifying it to replace "yahoo" with Google, but that didn't work. Should I remove the bit about "mcafee"?

thanks

You can reset the pref keyword.URL to the default value or use one of the other values mentioned in this article.

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Location_Bar_search

great, that did the trick, thank you very much everyone :)

You're welcome

Found it - sorry

These solutions only hide, but do not delete the search engine. I want Yahoo search engine removed from my computer, along with ebay, amazon etc. ones. I can "remove" them with the "manage" tool from the list of available engines, but they are still available in the default list. But my Yahoo engine (or a corrupted version) keeps trying to hijack Google, as revealed by McAfee. So I want them dead, buried and removed from the premises. They are just a hole ready for a worm to wriggle through.

How is this achieved?

The default search engines can be found as xml files in the searchplugins folder in the Firefox program folder.