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Firefox is prevented from accessing graphics hardware

  • 3 replies
  • 4 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by Poly47

Poly47
Poly47
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Suddenly when browsing the internet I got a message saying that " Application has been blocked from accessing graphics hardware". When this happened Firefox became unresponsive and I had to shut it down. I checked and there is no crash report logged in Firefox, seemingly Windows decided that Firefox was doing something wrong and decided to prevent access to graphics hardware, I have hardware acceleration enabled in Firefox. What happened did not affect Windows itself or other software as far as I can tell. After restarting Firefox everything worked just fine, not a big problem but it would be interesting to know why this happened, it was the first time i have seen a message from Windows saying something about software and hardware access. I'm on win2012 with latest updates, graphics card is from Nvidia a gtx760 with the latest driver installed.

Suddenly when browsing the internet I got a message saying that " Application has been blocked from accessing graphics hardware". When this happened Firefox became unresponsive and I had to shut it down. I checked and there is no crash report logged in Firefox, seemingly Windows decided that Firefox was doing something wrong and decided to prevent access to graphics hardware, I have hardware acceleration enabled in Firefox. What happened did not affect Windows itself or other software as far as I can tell. After restarting Firefox everything worked just fine, not a big problem but it would be interesting to know why this happened, it was the first time i have seen a message from Windows saying something about software and hardware access. I'm on win2012 with latest updates, graphics card is from Nvidia a gtx760 with the latest driver installed.

All Replies (3)

Poly47
Poly47 Question owner
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Winows system logs show that firefox.exe has been prevented from accessing graphics hardware, Firefox had a proper crash today while minimized to the taskbar, I think this version, 43.0.1, might be a dud. I'll update to the latest version and see if that helps.

the-edmeister
the-edmeister
  • Moderator
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Try updating to Firefox 44.0 by using Help > About Firefox to initiate a check for the update.

Poly47
Poly47 Question owner
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So, I updated to version 44.0.1 which didn't go well at all. Firefox crashed almost immediately. I then uninstalled Firefox and removed what folders and registry settings were left and then installed the 64bit version, 44.0, of Firefox. Everything seemed to be working just fine for half a day when my computer screen went black and windows stopped working, I had to do a hard reset, windows system logs didn't reveal what software was responsible other than that a unexpected shutdown had occurred. I now have Opera installed as my browser, it has been up and running with hardware acceleration on fore more than a day now, so far there has been no glitches of any kind. I'd rather be using Firefox as I have been for 10 years now, I've gotten rather used to it, I'm sure you guys will sort things out and I'll soon be back in the fold.