Microsoft Internet Explorer, which comes pre-installed in all versions of Microsoft Windows, is pre-configured to go to a specific page each time it starts up. If you bought your computer from a manufacter like Hewlett-Packard, they may have set Internet Explorer on all their computers to go to the Hewlett-Packard home page, for example. You probably do not consider the Hewlett-Packard website to be the most interesting page in the world, so you want to know how to change Internet Explorer settings so that it will go to a different home page each time it starts up.

These instructions describe how to change your home page. (Minor point of terminology for newbies: Internet Explorer uses the term "home page" to refer to the page that Internet Explorer goes to each time you start it up. Elsewhere, the term "home page" is also used to describe a web page that someone makes about themselves, describing who they are and listing their hobbies and interests, although those types of home pages actually tended to go out of style with the rise of Myspace and Facebook profiles in the 2000's. Still, if someone asks you "Do you have a home page?", they mean "Do you have a webpage somewhere on the Internet that tells people about yourself?", not "Does your browser go to a specific address each time you start it up?" :-) )

To set your home page, first open Internet Explorer and go to the page that you want to set as your home page, for example http://www.yahoo.com/.

Then, go to the "Tools" menu in Internet Explorer, and pick "Internet Options":

(By the way, if you're using Windows Vista, you might not see the familiar "File", "Edit", "View", etc. menu options across the top of the window any more. To bring the menu options back, read How to restore your menu options in Vista's Internet Explorer)

You should then be seeing the Internet Options dialog box:

In the first tab of the Internet Options dialog box, you'll see a space at the top labeled "Home page". The web address displayed in this space, is your existing home page -- the page that your browser is set to go to whenever you launch it. To change your home page to the page that's currently displayed in the web browser, click the "Use current" button. You'll see the web address in the box, change to the web address of the currently displayed web page:

Then click "OK" at the bottom of the dialog box to save your changes. Now, whenever you open Internet Explorer, it will go directly to the page that you saved as your new home page.

Bennett Haselton is a technology and political blogger whose real job is running a page that tells you how to bypass IPrism/St. Bernard Internet filters, among other things.