How to Disable the News Headlines in Netscape Messenger

Close all instances of Netscape Communicator. To do this, click on FILE button found at the top of the window. When the dropdown menu appears, click Exit to close the program. If you don't do this, your preferences file will be lost.

Close all instances of Netscape Communicator. To do this, click on FILE button found at the top of the window. When the dropdown menu appears, click Exit to close the program. If you don't do this, your preferences file will be lost.

Check in the system tray (located in the bottom-right corner of the desktop) to make sure that the Mail Notifier that runs in the system tray is closed. If you are using Java applets, it may take up to 30 seconds for all active Java applets to halt and for the Netscape Communicator to stop.

Open your preferences file. Click on START >>Search. Make sure Files and Folders is selected and set the Look in location to C:\WINDOWS or wherever your Windows installation is located. Type prefs.js into the text box.

Click Search. Once the preferences file is listed in the right-hand pane, right click on the icon and then click "Open With." This will present you with a list of programs

Select Notepad. You may receive a warning message upon opening the file telling you not to edit the file. Simply ignore this message. Once the file opens, you will need to add the following line at the end of the text file: user_pref("mailnews.start_page.enabled", false);

Save the notepad document after adding the line, and then exit. When you restart Netscape Messenger, you should not see the News Headlines page.