Firefox frequent blackening

[Komshija]

I have some annoying problems with my main browser lately, namely frequent website blackening while scrolling and sometimes while opening websites. The problem "fixes" itself after I press refersh (F5), but all those "solutions" on mozilla website didn't solve my problem. My PC currently has firefox 60.0 64-bit, prior to that 58.0.2 64-bit and prior to that 57.0.3 64-bit - on all versions I experienced the same problems. I tried refreshing firefox, a clean install, disabling themes, disabling and enabling hardware acceleration, disabling all addons, but nothing worked. I also clean cookies, cache and history.
This issue appeared some four months ago, happening every now and then, but now it seems to happen more frequently. I uninstalled Adobe Flash player more than 18 months ago, so I'm running on HTML5. I also have a full codec pack, but didn't try reinstalling it because everything else works perfectly.

Here are the examples how it looks like:


Could it be a failing CPU, GPU, MOBO, RAM's, SSD or some software conflicts? PSU is taken out of the equation, because it happened with my previous PSU and it continues happening with a new one.

What do you guys think the problem is and how it can be solved? Does anyone of you ever experienced similar issues?

 

[eidairaman1]

Could be an os update at this rate.
Try turning off hardware acceleration in the webbrowser.
Have you attempted to reset windows appearance, are you using any 3rd party shelling tools? Have you reinstalled your gpu driver?

 

[AltCapwn]

Could be an os update at this rate.
Try turning off hardware acceleration in the webbrowser.
Have you attempted to reset windows appearance, are you using any 3rd party shelling tools? Have you reinstalled your gpu driver?

Mozilla Quantum uses the GPU to generate the pages (https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/e...fast-again-and-where-its-going-to-get-faster/) . Disabling the gpu acceleration might fix your issue, or update the graphic driver.

Cheers,

 

[Komshija]

Could be an os update at this rate.
Try turning off hardware acceleration in the webbrowser.
Have you attempted to reset windows appearance, are you using any 3rd party shelling tools? Have you reinstalled your gpu driver?

For instance, this does not happen on my laptop (in signature - Win 7 Ultimate x64, firefox 59.0.2 32-bit). Auto updates are disabled on both machines as I usually manually update only important things.
I already tried turning off hardware acceleration. It didn't solve the problem.
I will try to reset windows appearance and see if this fixes the problem.
Yes, I reinstalled GPU driver and am currently using Radeon Adrenalin 18.3.4, previously 18.2.1 and prior to that 17.something - the problem was present on each version. I even tried a clean/fresh install.

Mozilla Quantum uses the GPU to generate the pages (https://hacks.mozilla.org/2017/11/e...fast-again-and-where-its-going-to-get-faster/) . Disabling the gpu acceleration might fix your issue, or update the graphic driver.

Cheers,

Tried both, didn't work.

 

[Beastie]

I've had a very similar issue and traced it to certain web pages borking the browser, probably due to badly implemented flash player (in my case).

I was worried that my gpu was going wrong initially, but it seems that it is entirely software related.

Obviously it isn't flash player in your instance, but I wouldn't discount the possibility of badly coded web content not getting along with your browser.

 

[AltCapwn]

I've read some people are having the same issues because of corrupted file.

try a reinstall of Firefox and do a sfc /scannow

Might fix your issues

 

[Komshija]

I was worried that my gpu was going wrong initially, but it seems that it is entirely software related.

Obviously it isn't flash player in your instance, but I wouldn't discount the possibility of badly coded web content not getting along with your browser.

I'm starting to suspect that my GPU might be the problem, but on the other hand I had no such issues in games.
GPU (Sapphire R9 390) overheated twice by reaching 94°C on the chip and probably over 100°C on VRM's and went throttling. I was surprised how suddenly my game become unplayable. It happened because of the faulty Sapphire TRIXX software. GPU was at stock speeds both times, but I had a custom fan curve. However, due to the buggy Sapphire TRIXX software, GPU somehow messed up and didn't follow my custom fan curve nor did it activate fans until the temps reached throttling point. Uninstalling TRIXX permanently solved that particular issue. I hope that my GPU wasn't damaged because of throttling, because there are no sings of shuttering or strange behavior in games.

I've read some people are having the same issues because of corrupted file.

try a reinstall of Firefox and do a sfc /scannow

Might fix your issues

I executed sfc/scannow command, but it reported no integrity violations. Firefox was reinstalled three times, including two clean installs.


I'm out of ideas what might be wrong. I also tried disabling WebGL, but it didn't solve the problem.

Could it be something like virtual memory? My page file is managed by the system which reserved 2432 MB for it. Now that number seems a little low, because I have 16 GB of RAM. I wonder could that be the issue?

 

[Final_Fighter]

see if switching to your onboard gpu fixes the problem. if it does then its gpu related.

 

[Komshija]

see if switching to your onboard gpu fixes the problem. if it does then its gpu related.

Just tried for a few hours running my system with iGPU (R9 390 was pulled out and iGPU selected in bios as primary boot). I had no such problems.

It might be a GPU-related issue. However, I have no problems in games or during playing videos. The problem appears only while browsing websites. Mostly just a portion (half) of the displaying website blackens, than blackening appears/disappears while scrolling. After I press F5, the website loads normally.

Therefore, I've initiated a couple of tests.

VMT displayed no errors.


However, MemtestCL displayed 50 failed iterations with 9367107 errors only on "Random blocks". I saw that many folks have exactly the same problem considering the random blocks, so could it be a faulty test maybe?


FurMark also shows no shuttering or such errors. It did crash a few times due to conflicts with Nahimic, but this was happening ever since I bought my PC. No biggie, temporarily disabling Nahimic prevents crashing .

So, could it really be a failing GPU?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Do any other browsers do it or is it isolated to FireFox?

 

[qubit]

Do any other browsers do it or is it isolated to FireFox?

What he said ^^ and I suspect that this is either card problem or drivers, especially since you tried the IGP. Try replacing the card with another and I think your problems will go away.

 

[Komshija]

@FordGT90Concept : I didn't test it with another browser, but will do and see it the problem remains.
The thing is that this problem appeared out of nowhere, some 4 months ago. At first it appeared every now and then and now it definitely seems more frequent. There was no new software installed at that specific time nor was any other software/appearance modified, except Canon's software (for printer) which was installed some 5 months ago. One month ago Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable x64 14.0.24123 was installed, but the problem appeared prior to that.

@qubit: A new GPU with similar performance is currently out of my reach. I sold all my previous hardware, so I have no spare GPU's. Buying used a GTX 980 Ti, GTX1070, R9 390, R9 390X or RX 580 in Croatia is risky (most of them were used in mining rigs) and I don't have an extra 4000+ kn (540+ € / 640+ $) for a new hardware, since I have to allocate my funds elsewhere to replace old and beat up furniture.

 

[commission3r]

theres nothing wrong with your system
i get the same issues especially on windows 10 but 7 & 8.1 don't have problem
its a software issue with the gpu drivers it's also why i haven't moved to windows 10

 

[dorsetknob]

My PC currently has firefox 60.0 64-bit, on win 7 with a Sapphire R9 280 oc
with up to date drivers
can report no problems here

 

[Xpect]

If I may throw in: I have te same problem with Firefox running on Linux Mint with an old GTS450 and the Nvidia drivers. So, going by the completely different OS architecture, I'd say it's a problem wit Firefox.

 

[Nuke Dukem]

I've had similar issues with Chrome some time ago. Different OS, browser, GPU brand, but still - similar symptoms. I noticed it was happening when my handles counter was at ~100k. I don't know if it was that really, but it went away after a while. It could have been some weird little instability issue, because I've since cleaned my DIMM contacts and (if I remember correctly) increased the (otherwise undervolted) CPU voltage 1 step. Or it could have been something GDI related - I'm running the Win7 classic theme.

All that being said, I'd guess it's some freaky Firefox bug.

 

[Final_Fighter]

try changing your your power options in control panel to high performance. see if this helps.

 

[Komshija]

theres nothing wrong with your system
i get the same issues especially on windows 10 but 7 & 8.1 don't have problem
its a software issue with the gpu drivers it's also why i haven't moved to windows 10

I'm on Windows 8.1 Pro x64, the system is in System Specs. It could be something software related, because on my laptop (Dell SXPS 1640, Win 7 x64, Firefox 59.0.2 32-bit) I have no such issues.

 

[commission3r]

I'm on Windows 8.1 Pro x64, the system is in System Specs. It could be something software related, because on my laptop (Dell SXPS 1640, Win 7 x64, Firefox 59.0.2 32-bit) I have no such issues.

the only thing i can think of is uninstalling the current gpu drivers you have and trying a different version, earlier or later and that would be my 1st move

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Yeah, might as well go full retard and use Display Driver Uninstaller too.

 

[Melvis]

Its the latest update for Windows 10, Im having issues like that also in Chrome and sometimes when doing nothing, the latest update broke something, just gotta wait till they patch it.

Edit: your on W8.1 hmmmm not sure then.

 

[eidairaman1]

Its the latest update for Windows 10, Im having issues like that also in Chrome and sometimes when doing nothing, the latest update broke something, just gotta wait till they patch it.

Edit: your on W8.1 hmmmm not sure then.

Sometimes the same updates on W10 apply to 7-8.1 too.

 

[Komshija]

Update: I'm browsing with Opera 53.0.2907.57 right now. Two days have passed and I had no issues, but the total time spent online was less than 3 hours, so I'll keep testing with Opera for at least 10 days and see if the problem remains.

the only thing i can think of is uninstalling the current gpu drivers you have and trying a different version, earlier or later and that would be my 1st move

The problem appeared when I was using Crimson 17.7.2 (I think) - after that completely removed it (including CCleaner + registry cleaner and manually deleting AMD folders from the registry) and made a clean install of Adrenalin 18.2.1. The problem didn't go away, so I installed Adrenalin 18.3.4, than uninstalled it completely and installed it again. The problem remained.
I've even set my monitor to 60 Hz refresh rate, because for some strange reason it was at 59 Hz, despite I've set it to 60 Hz long time ago. Such solution apparently solved the problem for someone, but not for me.

The only thing I haven't done is BIOS reset to default, but will do it if there will be similar blackening problems with Opera.

Its the latest update for Windows 10, Im having issues like that also in Chrome and sometimes when doing nothing, the latest update broke something, just gotta wait till they patch it.

Edit: your on W8.1 hmmmm not sure then.

I remember quite good that my last Windows update prior to this problem was more than one month earlier. So it would be strange how it didn't appear after that update.

My anti-virus program and Malwarebytes show no threats, so the system is highly likely clean; or it has some highly advanced CIA/NSA virus that's not that easy to detect.

 

[Xpect]

Didn't read further than my post lol

Jokes aside, I yesterday got those black boxes in my Chrome too, as said on Linux. In my case the CPU is really old and understated. I'll test, if a tiny bit more VCore can cure that for good. I just need it to happen a few times more to see when it happens for me. Yesterday it was while running a videostream on one Monitor and normal browsing on the secondary one.

I hope my possible findings can help you too.

 

[Komshija]

Didn't read further than my post lol

Jokes aside, I yesterday got those black boxes in my Chrome too, as said on Linux. In my case the CPU is really old and understated. I'll test, if a tiny bit more VCore can cure that for good. I just need it to happen a few times more to see when it happens for me. Yesterday it was while running a videostream on one Monitor and normal browsing on the secondary one.

I hope my possible findings can help you too.

Currently I don't have an extra monitor and TV is too big to mess around with it.

So, I'm using Opera browser and so far the problem seems to have disappeared. No more black screens I had with Firefox. I hope that it will remain so. Therefore, it's highly likely that Firefox had some incompatibility with my Sapphire R9 390 and/or with AMD drivers.