605071 - Pages are corrupted: text is scrambled/offset (unreadable), images are made of square blocks..

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Firefox :: General, defect)

Description

[Al Kristy]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100914 Firefox/3.6.10
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.10) Gecko/20100914 Firefox/3.6.10

When scroll down/up the pages, often suddenly the text becomes totally non-legible / unreadable; text lines move one on top or the other, fonts are displayed partially, images have (or partially made up of) lines of even square blocks ('carree') which partially ruin the images displayed. This doesn't happen when I.Explorer is used.
The problem disappears when the page is either refreshed (F5) or scrolled up or down (outside the visible area of the screen) and brought back again into the view, where the page gets re-drawn and that fixes the problem until another part of the document/page gets corrupted.
I suspect compatibility with a latest Professional ATI's Workstation 3D FirePro model# 8800 video card. 

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1.Just scroll up/down a long web-page and observe the corrupted text and graphics. It doesn't always happen on demand, but many-many times per session...
2.Sometimes the behavior "slows down", sometimes it becomes unbearable and super often...
3.Using Internet Explorer, I haven't managed to have this problem yet...
Actual Results:  
please read the above


xp-32, SP-2, EVGA - mother board, ATI Fire-Pro 8800, 6Gigs of Ram (Kingston), 
Kensington USB Expert Mouse trackball, Samsung 24" 16:9 flat screen, Intel's 2 flash drives: C:> 64gb Extreme and D:> 160GB Mainstream.

Comment 1

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Reporter, Firefox 4.0.1 has been released, and it features significant improvements over previous releases. Can you please update to Firefox 4.0.1 or later, and retest your bug? Please also create a fresh profile (
http://support.mozilla.com/kb/Managing+profiles), update your plugins (Flash, Java, Quicktime, Reader, etc) and update your graphics driver and Operating system to the latest versions available. 

If you still continue to see this issue, please comment. If you do not, please close this bug as RESOLVED > WORKSFORME

filter: prefirefox4uncobugs

Comment 2

[Tim (fmdeveloper)]

Al -> Are you still experiencing this issue? Have you tried safe mode or a new profile?

Comment 3

[Al Kristy]

No, I haven't updated the suggested soft, as some of my programs are closely connected to my current setup. This is a top-notch, high-end system and has been built with some of the best components and fine-tuned with pretty much all of the latest updates. The problem isn't with the Java or QuickTime.
Someone once suggested that it was the way FF handles certain types of fonts that cause the corruption of the pages.
As for the FFox version 4.0 – I’m not quite sure if I'm ready to change the look and feel of the program as well as my net-surfing habits just yet, though none of your prior updates have addressed any of my problems listed. 
The only other thing I could think of is that when I ran a DirectX test, I received an error with the 3D Rendering (during the test the image disappeared from the screen, showing a momentary loss of video signal to the monitor) for unexplained reason, not allowing me to confirm the results. Some suggested it’s an ATI’s issue… 
However, I don't believe that FF relies on 3D rendering to show internet pages.
So, for now, I'm keeping this issue still open.
Please look into it a bit further.

Thank you

Comment 4

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

Odd you are using 6gb ram with a 32bit OS.

Anyway. Please update to Firefox 5. 3.6 is nearing its EOL and will not be receiving any more updates. After updating, please update your graphics driver to the latest from AMD. Then create a fresh profile and if you still see the issue copy and paste the information from about:support. Thank you.

Comment 5

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

BTW there have been lots of fixes for scrolling in firefox 4 and 5

Comment 6

[Al Kristy]

Thank you, Tyler, for your suggestions. I'll think about them.
The reason for the 6GB RAM is that at the time of this production system build, I (kind of) also entertained a possibility of having a dual-boot with another OP.Sys., but as I stated earlier, some of the programs (like super-rare Photoshop plug-ins) aren't functioning with the later versions of both, the program itself, as well as Op. System(s), as not all 64-bit Op. systems support 32-bit app's. :(, so those tie my hands at the moment.
I'm a tweaker..
[As for the shameless self-prop: mine is a raw-power system (besides other things) with an Intel's 12-core 3.33Ghz processor and Intel's 64GB server "Extreme" Flash drive and a 2GB FirePro Video Card, after a complete 20-second boot-up time, I run ONLY 17 processes -- doubt others can say the same about their systems and it also shuts down under 3 seconds!]
The system is extremely looked after with daily Registry cleaning and other maintenance routines...

Another (perhaps silly) reason for waiting to update the FF is that I absolutely love my iFoxFork Smooth 0.1.02 theme, that hasn't been updated for the v.5. :(

But, once again, thank you 4 your suggestions...

Comment 7

[Tyler Downer [He/Him]]

By continuing to run 3.6 you are opening yourself up to security holes as they are found, and this bug will never be fixed in 3.6 (if it is a firefox bug). Also, if this is a bug in Firefox it could very well be caused by one of your extensions. so at least upgrade and create a fresh profile to test. You can always revert later.

Comment 8

[Tim (fmdeveloper)]

Closing bug as Incomplete - if you are still experiencing this issue or have more information to provide feel free to post back here and we can re-open the bug. You can also get assistance by visiting the Firefox help site -> http://support.mozilla.com/en-US/kb/Ask+a+question