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Firefox main window goes black and all tools disappear.

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
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  • Last reply by stanstr

stanstr
stanstr
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Occasionally the Firefox main window will go black and all tools disappear.

It ends up with a black window, a blue frame, and the three buttons in the top right corner (minimize, maximize and close). If any audio (or video) is playing, the sound continues. If I click the X at top right to close it, it closes and when I restart it everything is ok. See the screenshot below.

This only happens once a day or so. I have no way of predicting it other than I'm usually scrolling down the page when it happens. It has happened in safe mode.

I'm using the most recent Firefox, 33.0.2, on Win 8.1 on an i5 system with 8G RAM.

Occasionally the Firefox main window will go black and all tools disappear. It ends up with a black window, a blue frame, and the three buttons in the top right corner (minimize, maximize and close). If any audio (or video) is playing, the sound continues. If I click the X at top right to close it, it closes and when I restart it everything is ok. See the screenshot below. This only happens once a day or so. I have no way of predicting it other than I'm usually scrolling down the page when it happens. It has happened in safe mode. I'm using the most recent Firefox, 33.0.2, on Win 8.1 on an i5 system with 8G RAM. <img src="http://i.imgur.com/Awx1fD0.png"/>

Modified by stanstr

All Replies (2)

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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Try to disable OMTC and leave hardware acceleration in Firefox enabled.

  • layers.offmainthreadcomposition.enabled = false

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.

You can try to disable hardware acceleration in Firefox.

  • Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"

You need to close and restart Firefox after toggling this setting.

stanstr
stanstr Question owner
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Thanks. I set layers.offmainthreadcomposition.enabled to false. If I see the problem again, I'll undo that and try disabling hardware acceleration. If that doesn't fix it, I'll try both.

Might the problem have something to do with having an SSD?