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Firefox in Ubuntu occasionally has black bars on screen

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I'm using Firefox in Ubuntu Linux 12.04. Occasionally I can see some scattered black bars on screen when I browse web pages. Those black bars will disappear after I click another tab and return to the original tab screen. This problem has persisted since earlier version of Firefox in Ubuntu. I upgraded Firefox to the latest v32.0 but sometimes it still has the same problem. So I don't know what causes this "scattered black bars on screen" problem. I don't know if it's the compatibility of Firefox with Ubuntu's Unity desktop issue or related to display memory.

I'm using Firefox in Ubuntu Linux 12.04. Occasionally I can see some scattered black bars on screen when I browse web pages. Those black bars will disappear after I click another tab and return to the original tab screen. This problem has persisted since earlier version of Firefox in Ubuntu. I upgraded Firefox to the latest v32.0 but sometimes it still has the same problem. So I don't know what causes this "scattered black bars on screen" problem. I don't know if it's the compatibility of Firefox with Ubuntu's Unity desktop issue or related to display memory.

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If you haven't already, could you try disabling Firefox's use of hardware acceleration? This can work around glitches caused by incompatibility with your graphics card driver software.

I'm not exactly where where this is on Linux, but maybe:

"3-bar" menu button (or Edit menu) > Preferences > Advanced

On the "General" mini-tab, uncheck the box for "Use hardware acceleration when available"

This takes effect the next time you exit and start Firefox up again.

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Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem.

  • Switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance
  • Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window
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The problem is still there after I turned off Ubuntu addon and hardware acceleration.