Lock and Unlock
Your Browsers Home Page

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How would you like to lock your home page so it cannot be changed by your brother, sister, parents, children or anyone else? This trick will make it so that your browsers home page (the page that comes up when you start your browser) cannot be changed either accidentally, or on purpose. It may even prevent some simple hijacking software from changing it.
You'll need to edit your Registry for this tip.
Changes to the Registry are semi permanent. Back it up or you'll be outta luck if something goes wrong.
Click here for more information on backing up and restoring the registry.

Click Start, Run, and enter REGEDIT

Navigate to this string:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel

If the keys for Internet Explorer and Control Panel are not present, add them manually.

  1. Right-click the Microsoft key folder, click New, and choose Key.
  2. Name it Internet Explorer.
  3. Right-click the Internet Explorer key folder, click New, and choose Key.
  4. Name it Control Panel.

Right-click the Control Panel key folder and choose "new DWORD value." Rename the value "Homepage."
Right-click the Homepage value, choose Modify, and change the value from "0" to "1."
Now go into your Internet Explorer options. Your homepage is locked and unmodifiable!

Here's a shortcut if you'd rather not edit the Registry yourself. Download and double-click the following file. It will make the above changes to your Registry automatically.


Lock Your Homepage Registry Script
Download


Undoing the damage

Sometimes we want to unlock it again. The following instructions will unlock it for you.

Back up your registry in case you mess up.
Navigate back to the string:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Policies\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Control Panel

Right-click the Homepage value, choose Modify, and change the value from "1" back to "0." Now go into your Internet Explorer options. Your homepage is unlocked and modifiable!