FireFox screen randomly goes black?

[bluebrad]

Hi, I've asked the FireFox support forum and live chat for help and still no avail. I'm just going to post what I said in the support forum (a helper from the forum directed me to these boards).

This really happens on any website whenever it wants to. When I'm randomly browsing, all FireFox screens that are opened will go completely black (so it covers up the entire webpage including taskbars. Pretty much everything but the top bar that says "Firefox" when the x-out button.) I don't understand what could be making this happen or why it would be. It's happened for a while now but I've gotten tired of this happening, because I'll have to exit out of FireFox completely to re-enter. If this helps, I can find the refresh button in the darkness (where you can't see anything) and when I press it, the screen will come back. This probably sounds really weird but hopefully I'm not the only one.

I've tried reinstalling FireFox completely including deleting the FireFox folder under C:\Program Files, and have just now downloaded FireFox 3.1 Beta 2 to see if it was just the version that was messing it up. Not for sure what else I can do, but any help is surely appreciated.

Thank you!

The helper, cor-el, told me to create a new profile. I did and still didn't fix the problem. So - if any of you can help me it is greatly appreciated.

EDIT: Just in case you need...

OS: Vista
Build: 3.0.5
Extensions: none

[James]

Could be a graphics driver issue as I have seen some pretty interesting issues that were due to certain graphics cards and a certain range of drivers for them over the years.

[bluebrad]

Could be a graphics driver issue as I have seen some pretty interesting issues that were due to certain graphics cards and a certain range of drivers for them over the years.

It didn't happen the first year I had FireFox. Could my graphics driver just all of a sudden do this? That would be very strange. It never happens in Internet Explorer or Google Chrome.

Again, any help is appreciated on fixing this or I'll probably end up having to get rid of it. I lose my place in pages all the time because of this.

[the-edmeister]

Firefox 3 has a vast number of improvements over Firefox 2 as far as graphics, and your graphics drivers might not be able to handle Firefox any longer. Look for updated drivers.


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[Daifne]

Or did you maybe get a driver update through your Windows updates? I've been seeing some bad driver updates coming from Windows updates lately. The affected machines have mostly been HP/Compaq laptops with Nvidia, but others wouldn't surprise me. Try rolling back your video driver.

[bluebrad]

Firefox 3 has a vast number of improvements over Firefox 2 as far as graphics, and your graphics drivers might not be able to handle Firefox any longer. Look for updated drivers.


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There are no updated drivers. My graphics driver is an Intel G33/G31. I doubt it's on my end anymore because I've noticed that it only happens on maximized windows - things that don't take up the whole screen are fine.

@Daifne - I don't think I've seen any updates through Windows updates. I just looked and the Windows update history shows that nothing has been updated.