This solution might not be the answer for every situation in which the front page component and manager is not working correctly. But, it is an overlooked aspect of the Joomla installation, and since I couldn't find any info giving me this answer, I'll just share it with you Joomla lovers to save you the trouble.

First tip:

Your Joomla "Home" component does not actually have a place in your list of components through the Joomla admin. The Joomla "Home" component is only located as a menu item in whatever menu you have set up to display the Joomla Home component.

With that said, when I started configuring my Joomla site, I decided to move the "Home" link into another menu (it defaults to the mainmenu) titled: topmenu. After doing this I couldn't make any changes to the Joomla front page manager or Home component and see that it did any good.

Bottom line, your "Home" menu item (AKA Home Component) has to be located in the menu titled: Mainmenu, and it also has to be the very first item in the list of menu items. There might be fixes for this, but that is what I had to do to fix my problem.

Good luck! Hope this helps someone.