Beware FireFox 4 crashes Nvidia drivers

If you can 100% fix the problem with a software change it is a software problem not a hardware problem, and that is the case with the Firefox crashes.

If you have other problems, not just Firefox, then you have some other problem -- so start your own topic.

nVidia GTX460, never over-clocked, and it crashes Firefox with any version of the nVidia WHQL drivers later than version 275.33.

Anyone wanting proof that this problem is caused by nVidia is invited to install the 275.33 drivers and see that this particular problem goes away.

I'm shocked. I pointedly advise everyone to stay away from nVidia because nVidia has been so incredibly intransigent in its refusal to admit the problem is its drivers.

I've done clean installs, even installs with DriverSweeper, all the WHQL versions since 275.33, as clean as is possible without re-formatting and re-installing Windows, and it just does not help.

But you know, if a clean install did fix it, it would still be a bug in nVidia's code because requirements for clean installs are due to bugs in install scripts.

Anyway, clean installs don't fix it. You can only fix it by going back to an earlier nVidia driver, (one that doesn't have the optimization for SkyRim, the game I'm waiting to play).

nVidia's corporate attitude on this is a disgrace.

I'm testing Firefox 8 on Ubuntu with accelerated latest Nvidia driver. It didnot crash yet and the hw acceleration is ON.
Also I get graphic driver crashes on Windows on high CPU load -> it doesnot depend if CPU idle or utilized, just in loaded state it looks the driver is less likely to crash. This is really hard nut to diagnose but well, turning off hw acceleration in Firefox would probably eliminate the problem completely.

Is there w way to benchmark page render speed with and w/out hw acceleration?
If the speed gain of GPU acceleration is none or only small then it's not worth using this feature.

We could do a lot of things, go to a lot of effort, but you know ... it would all be pointless since none of us is in a position to fix nVidia's code.

And it would be difficult too, since we don't know what their code is supposed to do.

Clearly any so-called fix that involves installing old drivers, turning off hardware acceleration, switching to google chrome or changing from Windows 7 to Umbutu, OS/x, or whatever, is not really a fix but a bypass.

All we can really do, as nVidia customers and former customers, is to make a proof positive case that it is nVidia's drivers or install script that are the root cause of this problem.

I think it is very likely it is something nVidia is failing to test, and since I have a pretty vanilla Dell, Core i7-9600, 12 GB, McAfee and nothing weird, I think the most likely area they'd fail to test properly is the install.

Surfing the web with FF, none of the 8 "CPUs" (or PUs in the CPU if you prefer) goes about 50%, and usually 6 are just about totally idle.

Which is why I think it is likely an error in their install scripts, not the actual drivers, a bug in the install script that leaves incompatible modules or registry entries. But of course that is a blind guess.

To document that the error is nVidia's code:

1. Simply be one of the people who has the problem where FF crashes with the nVidia drivers (with no other video issue).
2. Change driver versions and nothing else.
3. Test it for a couple of days.
4. Most importantly, document your test results here in this topic.

If you do not have this issue and you want to help you could do so by:
1. Installing last winter's or last spring's drivers.
2. Installing the newer drivers from this summer or the latest drivers. Do this using only the standard update script provided by nVidia as an innocent computer user would do (nothing special, nothing custom).
3. See if just by doing that you can replicate the problem on your computer.
4. Most importantly, document your test results here in this topic.

Document your test results by stating whether you were able to create or eliminate the problem by changing driver versions. Also give your FF version, CPU, windows version, memory size, anti-virus. I can't think of anything else relevant, but if you can that would be good too.

a) Was able to create and eliminate the crashes by changing nVidia driver version with FF 6 through 8. 275.33 and earlier drivers work okay for me, all the later drivers cause a crash with FF.
b) Core i7-960.
c) 6 and now 12 GB.
d) McAfee.

Look here: NVIDIA Windows Desktop/Internet Browser TDR Troubleshooting - NVIDIA Forums - Page 40
Some users reported to eliminate the crashes with beta test driver.