This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

How to fix the random Chinese place holder text and random characters that show up after opening multiple tabs.

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

Opening 1 tab in firefox 42.0 is okay, once we open a 2nd or 3rd tab everything is okay. But within minutes after opening the 2nd and 3rd tab we get a string of Random Chinese characters, numbers and boxes on the top of Title Bars. You cannot copy the text, click on the text. This has been happening the last 2 weeks. I have reset the Firefox browser, cleared cache, removed all unknown add-ons including McAfee, removed all search providers except google. Checked UTF code.

Opening 1 tab in firefox 42.0 is okay, once we open a 2nd or 3rd tab everything is okay. But within minutes after opening the 2nd and 3rd tab we get a string of Random Chinese characters, numbers and boxes on the top of Title Bars. You cannot copy the text, click on the text. This has been happening the last 2 weeks. I have reset the Firefox browser, cleared cache, removed all unknown add-ons including McAfee, removed all search providers except google. Checked UTF code.

All Replies (2)

more options

Type about:preferences#content<enter> in the address bar. Across from fonts and colors, press the Advanced button. On the bottom, turn on Allow Web Sites To Choose Their Own.

more options

Can you attach a screenshot?

  • Use a compressed image type like PNG or JPG to save the screenshot
  • Make sure that you do not exceed the maximum size of 1 MB

The McAfee SiteAdvisor extension has been reported to cause issues with text Chinese (CJK) characters appearing on tabs, so you can disable this extension until McAfee releases an update to address this issue.

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

  • Switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox menu button/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance
  • Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window