Solved Beware FireFox 4 crashes Nvidia drivers

[edilee012]

I had 4 crashes withing 30 minutes of using the new browser and did a search and found it is a widespread issue. Disable hardware acceleration in the options/settings menu to prevent this till they fix this piece of junk.

 

[Maguscreed]

Instead of needlessly freaking out it would be just as easy to be part of the solution.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/grafx-bot/

FF has never been that slow at fixing major issues like this, but they need information to work on to fix the problem.
It could very well be an issue with the nvidia graphics driver as well since ATI seems completely immune to it.

info - Introducting Grafx Bot « JGriffin's Blog

 

[Wallonn7]

Well, considering that nVidia released a driver that literally burned video cards some time ago, I am inclined to blame nVidia, not Firefox.

 

[edilee012]

Instead of needlessly freaking out it would be just as easy to be part of the solution.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/grafx-bot/

FF has never been that slow at fixing major issues like this, but they need information to work on to fix the problem.
It could very well be an issue with the nvidia graphics driver as well since ATI seems completely immune to it.

info - Introducting Grafx Bot « JGriffin's Blog

Well, considering that nVidia released a driver that literally burned video cards some time ago, I am inclined to blame nVidia, not Firefox.

I did add my report to their site along with some others and that is where I located that others were having the same issue. I cannot even begin to put blame on Nvidia's drivers since the current set has been out for well over a month and this issue should have presented itself before FF 4's release. I still have to do some testing to provide them with more detailed info but the crashes seem to happen when using the Download Helper add-on so that might be the culprit.

Aside from that issue that I was just wanting to inform people about before they stumbled across it for themselves...the new FF, IE, and Chrome all all impressive releases. I did also notice that when I disabled hardware acceleration FF seemed to be faster so maybe it will be something FF and Nvidia need to figure out because IE uses hardware acceleration just fine.

 

[Maguscreed]

The very existence of the plugin I linked you kind of states the problem has been around long enough for them to release a bot specifically targeting it.

 

[Airbot]

Guess it depends on what Nvidia card/drivers you're using because I've never had the problem of it crashing with my GTX 480/drivers and any of the FF 4 versions, hardware acceleration on or off.

 

[Wallonn7]

Guess it depends on what Nvidia card/drivers you're using because I've never had the problem of it crashing with my GTX 480/drivers and any of the FF 4 versions, hardware acceleration on or off.

I stand by my earlier position in favor of Firefox.:lock:
And reconsider my comment about nVidia, but only in this case.

 

[foldertree]

nVidia video driver crash with Firefox 4

Same issue (screen goes black for a second then back to normal, pop-up message says nVidia driver crashed and then was restored)
Seven 64 bits with nVidiaDisplay Driver v8.17.12.5912 (NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 1024MB VRAM)
This Mozilla Wiki states:

We require NVIDIA driver version 257.21 or newer (June 2010), see bug 623338.
Notice that 257.21 is the commercial version number. This corresponds to the last 5 digits in the technical version number, which for instance is 8.17.12.5721 on Windows 7/Vista.

Link: Blocklisting/Blocked Graphics Drivers
So I should be fine with version 259.12 but crash is consistent.
Deactivating graphics acceleration solves the issue for now.
PS. I had no addons issues with Firefox 3.
(posted on https://support.mozilla.com/fr/questions/795964#answer-158776)

Edit: Geforce.com provides an updated driver (Nvidia Verde for notebooks v267.76 WHQL released on March 24, 2011).
Among other things, it touts "Improved compatibility and reliability with GPU-accelerated websites viewed using Internet Explorer 9" for Vista/Seven 32/64 bits, but says absolutely nothing about improved compatibility with Firefox 4.
Link: http://fr.download.nvidia.com/Windows/267.76/267.76_Win7_Notebook_Release_Notes.pdf
(Toshiba's latest update is version 259.12)

 

[seekermeister]

Guess it depends on what Nvidia card/drivers you're using because I've never had the problem of it crashing with my GTX 480/drivers and any of the FF 4 versions, hardware acceleration on or off.

Same here on a GTX 460SC.

 

[darkfriday]

Guess it depends on what Nvidia card/drivers you're using because I've never had the problem of it crashing with my GTX 480/drivers and any of the FF 4 versions, hardware acceleration on or off.

Ditto

Rock solid performance with GTX 460 here.....

 

[pigreco314]

Crashes happen here too

Hi,
it even happened in this very moment, while writing this reply.
My system: HP Elitebook laptop 8440p, NVIDIA 3100M, driver version 8.17.12.6128 (December 2010)

Running Firefox4 and considering downgrading to FF3 which never caused problems, just to try and isolate the culprit.

Not a major annoyance but it is an annoyance.

Bye

 

[Wallonn7]

Hi,
it even happened in this very moment, while writing this reply.
My system: HP Elitebook laptop 8440p, NVIDIA 3100M, driver version 8.17.12.6128 (December 2010)

Running Firefox4 and considering downgrading to FF3 which never caused problems, just to try and isolate the culprit.

Not a major annoyance but it is an annoyance.

Bye

Hi pigreco314 and welcome to SF!
Go to Tools > Options > Advanced > General tab: Uncheck the box "when available, using hardware acceleration". That should solve the problem.

 

[Maguscreed]

It is a known issue. Though there is a bit of debate as to whether the problem is related to nvidia drivers of FF since ATI hasn't not been experiencing it.
palemoon is also an option.
The Pale Moon Project homepage

 

[Wallonn7]

It is a known issue. Though there is a bit of debate as to whether the problem is related to nvidia drivers of FF since ATI hasn't not been experiencing it.
palemoon is also an option.
The Pale Moon Project homepage

Thanks for the info, Maguscreed!

 

[GeneO]

No problems with any FF version with a GTS 450 here.

 

[Schroff87]

Get the latest WHQL 270.61 from laptopvideo2go. No issues with my SLI gtx 460 setup.

 

[pigreco314]

Hi,
it even happened in this very moment, while writing this reply.
My system: HP Elitebook laptop 8440p, NVIDIA 3100M, driver version 8.17.12.6128 (December 2010)

Running Firefox4 and considering downgrading to FF3 which never caused problems, just to try and isolate the culprit.
Bye

Hi pigreco314 and welcome to SF!
Go to Tools > Options > Advanced > General tab: Uncheck the box "when available, using hardware acceleration". That should solve the problem.

Thanks for the hint but it seems that the problem is resoved by installing the latest driver from NVidia (270.61) which is newer than what HP diagnostics suggests.
At least since I did it I haven't experienced crashes.
Should it happen again, I will try with the FF setting you suggested.

Thanks!

 

[pigreco314]

Get the latest WHQL 270.61 from laptopvideo2go. No issues with my SLI gtx 460 setup.

Ditto!
I took me a while to understand what was the right driver but the auto-detect tool on the NVidia support page did the trick and suggested WHQL 270.61.

No crashes (yet) after upgrading.

Thanks

 

[Wallonn7]

Hi,
it even happened in this very moment, while writing this reply.
My system: HP Elitebook laptop 8440p, NVIDIA 3100M, driver version 8.17.12.6128 (December 2010)

Running Firefox4 and considering downgrading to FF3 which never caused problems, just to try and isolate the culprit.
Bye

Hi pigreco314 and welcome to SF!
Go to Tools > Options > Advanced > General tab: Uncheck the box "when available, using hardware acceleration". That should solve the problem.

Thanks for the hint but it seems that the problem is resoved by installing the latest driver from NVidia (270.61) which is newer than what HP diagnostics suggests.
At least since I did it I haven't experienced crashes.
Should it happen again, I will try with the FF setting you suggested.

Thanks!

You're welcome! Glad to hear you got no more crashes.

 

[Anakunda]

Hello, did this issue record some progress? I'm using FF6 now with HW acceleration and latest Nvidia driver and encounter random driver crashes occassionally followed by BSODs as well. I already had been complaining at Nvidia forum where I was instructed that this is known issue of FF. So where's the buried dog? Is there a known extension or workaround fixing this problem?