Bing tab popping up

I installed Win8 CP the other day on a spare HDD that I have for my laptop, and after finagling a few drivers, I have it up and running acceptably. I'm kinda getting the hang of the new UI (even though I would prefer the old Start Menu), but one very irksome thing I finally found a solution to is in IE10.

When I open IE from the Desktop, my Google homepage comes up, then a Bing page comes up on the next tab. I only have one homepage in IE Options, and it's set to come up on that. I read an article about adding another search provider in Manage Add-ons. . . I opened Manage Add-ons, and on the Search Provider tab, the only site listed is Bing. I clicked on the "Find more search providers..." link at the bottom of the page, and iegallery came up. I clicked on Google, then on Add to Internet Explorer, but the link seemed to be dead. Nothing I did would allow me to add Google to IE.

Now the solution:

Start IE from the UI tiles shortcut, and when it asks if you want Bing as your default search provider, click on No. Then go to the Desktop, right-click on the taskbar, and pick Task Manager. Under the Process tab, close any instances of IE that may be there.

Start IE from the taskbar, and now the Bing tab won't come up, only your homepage. And if you want to add another search provider or two, the process to do so works. Why Bing would lock that, I don't know, but this was my work-around. If there's an easier way, I'd be happy to read it, 'cause I certainly couldn't find one :-)

SC Tom

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