When I open Firefox I get a black screen; how do I get rid of it?

Question

When I first click on Firefox my monitor shows an all black window for a home page. A small rotating circle shows up on the black window; the indicator that a web site is loading. After a few seconds the circle goes away and for a flash the screen shows the url itself of my established home page, with a bit of an outline of that opening. Just as quickly, that disappears and the window goes black again. I can close it by right clicking on the Firefox logo and selecting "close all windows," and I can minimize it by using the windows key and the letter M. I feel that the correct screen is underneath the black window, but to which I have no access.
Before all this happened the search engine Ask had made itself the home page for Firefox without my consciously asking for that. By going to the control panel and the Internet entry, I removed what had become the url (of Ask's supplied home page) in the choice for home page, with my usual one (www.excite.com). That's when the above trouble started and remains.
Obviously, I am writing this contact to the Internet and a different machine. On the computer with the problem I couldn't see what I am doing. I could have also used Windows Explorer on the troubled machine; it has not been affected with the same problem.

Answer 1

I have also found that unchecking the "Use hardware acceleration when available" option solves this issue. This option is in the Advanced section, under the General tab.