Ask.com is my default Internet Explorer home page or search engine in Windows. How do I change it?

Internet Explorer allows you to change your browser homepage and search engine at any time.

To change your homepage, look at the upper right corner of your Internet Explorer browser window, select the gear icon (as shown below), and then "Internet Options" from the drop down menu. If you cannot find the gear icon, find the row of menus across the top of your computer screen such as File, Edit, View, etc. Click on the menu that says Tools, and from that Tools menu, click on Internet Options. Then proceed to the next step.

Find the section marked "Home page." When you first open Internet Options, the entire home page address should be highlighted in light blue; type the backspace key on your keyboard to delete it. Alternately, use your mouse to select the entire address you see beginning with "http://www.search.ask.com" and delete it with the backspace key. Then, type your desired home page in that space--for example, if you'd like Facebook as your homepage, type in www.facebook.com. Once you have typed in your preferred homepage, click "Apply" and then click "OK."

That's it for your default homepage settings! After making the change to your default homepage, you'll need to open a new Internet Explorer window to see the change. Changing your homepage setting doesn't retroactively affect pages you already had open prior to making the change.

If your homepage doesn't change after doing the above, make sure you typed a valid page address in place of the Ask address. (e.g. "Facebook" is not a valid page address, but www.facebook.com is valid).

To change your default New Tab page in Internet Explorer, look for the Tabs section in the same Options menu, and click on the Tabs button.

Next, look at the setting titled “When a new tab is opened, open:” and change the value to whatever you desire.

In order to make changes to your default search engine, start with the same steps mentioned above to open the Internet Options. Click on the “Programs” tab and then on “Manage Add-ons”. This will open another window in which you will see “Search Providers” in the left rail menu. After clicking on “Search Providers”, the right rail will be populated with available search engines. Click on your preferred search engine from the list, and then click on the “Set as Default” button on the bottom-right corner of the window. This will set your new default search engine. 

This will open another window in which you will see “Search Engines” in the left rail menu. After clicking on “Search Engines”, the large list will be populated with available search engines. Click on your preferred search engine from the list, and then click on the “Set as Default” button on the bottom-right corner of the window. This will set your new default search engine.