Anyone have problems with firefox rendering?

[pete6032]

Like this?

Gone through multiple version of FF and it still renders crazy sometimes. Doesn't matter the site. If I select and highlight the text that's rendered crazy and then unselect it, it will appear fine again.

 

[code65536]

This looks an awful lot like a GPU problem. On Windows, Firefox uses Windows' DirectWrite API to render text and DirectWrite, in turn, uses GPU acceleration. If there is a problem with the GPU, corruptions like this can occur. Selection and deselection can "fix" the problem by forcing that text to be re-rendered. If, for example, the problem is with corrupted GPU memory (even a single bad bit can cause noticeable problems), that re-rendering might end up using a different region of GPU memory that doesn't have the problem.

Edit: You can test the GPU theory by opening about:config and setting "gfx.direct2d.disabled" to true. This disables the GPU acceleration.

 

[Hugh Jass]

Or you can try going into Firefox settings and unchecking the "use hardware acceleration when available" box. It essentially does the config edit the poster above mentioned without having to go into the about:config page.

I was getting the same type of corruption on an older system of mine and it cleared up once I unchecked that box.

 

[pete6032]

Thanks code, Hugh, I will give this a shot.

 

[code65536]

Or you can try going into Firefox settings and unchecking the "use hardware acceleration when available" box. It essentially does the config edit the poster above mentioned without having to go into the about:config page.

Oh, I didn't realize that they had added an option to the UI. Yea, that's a better way to do it.

I was getting the same type of corruption on an older system of mine and it cleared up once I unchecked that box.

Though if there's a hardware problem, it's best to address it (if possible) instead of sweeping it under the carpet.

And on systems where the GPU uses the system memory instead of its own dedicated memory, a memtest would be a good idea, too.

 

[pete6032]

Still seeing this issue after turning off HW acceleration. What is weird to me is that this problem only appears in Firefox, not in word, outlook, excel, or any other applications I use on a regular basis.

 

[Hugh Jass]

In my case the issue was an older onboard ATI video chipset driver that Firefox and Windows 8 didn't play nice with. Didn't see the issue in Windows 7 with the same older hardware.

But yeah OP...if you're still seeing the issue after turning that off you may want to run a memtest although I'm not sure it's a hardware issue given that it doesn't do it in any other applications other than Firefox. Sounds to me like a driver issue and/or Firefox being finicky.

 

[Hugh Jass]

Check out the first unresolved known issue at the bottom of the page. May help...especially if you're running Windows 8.1.

http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/29.0.1/releasenotes/