Trouble with Firefox

TheForce

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Oct 13, 2003
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Jacksonville, FL, Earth
I recently began to have problems with Firefox. I'm using it on win 7 and it should be the latest version 33.

The problem is it boots up but the entire Firefox window is black. It is the only program I have that has this problem. I have tried to repair the registry with a utility, reboot, reinstalled it from fresh download and nothing is working. Firefox is still working fine on other computers. Any idea what might be causing this display error?

I'm now using Google Chrome and have been considering switching to it permanently. But I had quite a few custom bookmarks on Firefox and the XMarks tool to sync them to all my computers. If I decide to move to Chrome, is there a way to set up a sidebar of bookmarks in Chrome that sees them from the XMarks sync utility? edit- Nevermind, I discovered I could install XMARKS for Chrome and even safari.
 
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I set up firefox for the first time on a samsung laptop running Windows 7 at work yesterday. I experienced the same black window as you. I'm not sure what happened but it cleared its self up after a few minutes unexpectedly. I went home a few minutes later so I didn't have a chance to tinker with it. Firefox on my Windows 8 machine at home is working fine.
 
Interesting! I just checked and I still have that black screen. I've been using Chrome all day with no problems. Been wanting to make the move anyway since it puts me closer to the infrastructure of my android phone. Have no complaints so far.
 
This worked for me:
With Firefox fully closed, you can hold down the Shift key when starting Firefox.
A small dialog should appear. Click "Start in Safe Mode" (not Reset).
If Firefox is visible, go ahead and disable Firefox's use of hardware acceleration as a workaround for a possible graphics card driver software incompatibility.
"3-bar" menu button (or Tools menu) > Options > Advanced
On the "General" mini-tab, uncheck the box for "Use hardware acceleration when available"
 
Yeah, try safe mode. Its possible you have an add-on that is causing issues.

You can also create a new firefox profile, just to test.
 
OK, opening in safe mode worked. I then shut off hardware acceleration and had to reset my setup with bookmarks and and main toolbar too. It's now back to normal.

Thanks much for getting me on track.

I do recall there was a reboot windows update before this problem showed up. Anyway, thanks for the fix. I wonder why this problem? Was it a windows MS generated problem or something that Mozilla did?


Now that I have both working, which is better and why? At this point it seems 6 of one half dozen of the the other. With Google being the bigger bully in the play yard, it may ultimately offer more advantages and better stability, but I'm only guessing here.

Firefox or Chrome? Which to stick with?
 
Do you use the Adblock plus addon? It is available for both browsers but it is much more effective in Firefox. Give it a test run with some of the pages you go to often. Try each browser without Adblock. Then try each browser with Adblock. I did this a long time ago and reported my results in a thread on here. Let us know how things turn out.
 
I have a suggestion..Make sure video drivers are on the latest software.. I was messing virtual ubuntu machine (Built into windows 7) I had a similar issue with firefox in ubuntu..I upgraded the software(driver) for the video card and it cleared
 
I have used both over the years, but always stick with firefox for default browser.I now prefer Opera over chrome, give it a try and see what ya think.It uses the same engine as chrome, but really works better on my machines.

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