How to Change the Internet Explorer Initial Start Web Page

When you deploy Internet Explorer in a user-profiled environment (such as Windows NT or Windows 2000), you may want to change the initial start page that is displayed when each user starts Internet Explorer.

The first time that a user starts Internet Explorer, it opens the welcome page for the version of Internet Explorer that is in use. After that, Internet Explorer opens the preferred home page when a user starts Internet Explorer. The welcome page is located on the Microsoft Web site; a user must have Internet access for Internet Explorer to display the welcome page.

To modify the "first-run" Web address that Internet Explorer uses:

1. Open the Homepage.inf file that is located in the following folder (where Windir is the folder in which Windows NT or Windows 2000 is installed):
   Windir\System32
2. Locate the following entry in the [Strings] section:
   FirstHomePage="http://www.microsoft.com/isapi/redir.dll?prd={SUB_PRD}&ar=runonce&pver={SUB_PVER}&plcid={SUB_CLSID}"

   
   
   NOTE: The above entry is all one line. It has been wrapped for readability.
3. Change the area within the quotation marks to the Web address that you want to use. For example:

   [Strings]
   FirstHomePage="http://www.microsoft.com/games"
   						

   NOTE: The above entry has not been wrapped.

The value in the Homepage.inf file is stored in the registry under the following key: For additional information about how to determine which folder Windows is installed in, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: