Closed Bug 620003 Opened 15 years ago Closed 14 years ago

HP Envy theme (StarDocks) breaks hardware acceleration

Categories

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Product:
Core
Component:
Graphics
Platform:
x86
Windows 7
Type:
defect
Priority:
Not set
Severity:
normal

Tracking

()

Status:
RESOLVED WONTFIX

People

(Reporter: jduell.mcbugs, Unassigned)

Details

I've tried using both the nightly and b7 with my new HP Envy laptop, and the screen is a crazy mess of black blips whenever I scroll or highlight, etc. Very unhappy. Bas and I debugged this last night at the All-hands a bit. He suspects it may be some interaction with the HP Envy's theme and/or other mods to the default Windows look & feel. We changed the theme from the HP envy one to the default windows one, but various things (scrollbars) still look different. So unclear if this is a bug for all instance of this hardware, or if HP is partly the cause. The about:support data below is from my profile that turns off hardware acceleration (everything works fine now). I tested on a clean profile (deleted prefs.js) and that's when I get the mess. Let me know if there's anything else I should try. I'm on Windoze 7 home Ed. 64 bit -- Application Basics Name Firefox Version 4.0b9pre User Agent Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0b9pre) Gecko/20101216 Firefox/4.0b9pre Profile Directory Open Containing Folder Enabled Plugins about:plugins Build Configuration about:buildconfig Extensions Name Version Enabled ID MSN Toolbar 4.0 false msntoolbar@msn.com Search Helper Extension 1.0 false {27182e60-b5f3-411c-b545-b44205977502} Vimperator 2.3.1 false vimperator@mozdev.org Modified Preferences Name Value accessibility.browsewithcaret_shortcut.enabled false accessibility.typeaheadfind.autostart false browser.link.open_newwindow.restriction 0 browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion 2 browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID 20101216030331 browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone rv:2.0b9pre browser.tabs.warnOnClose false dom.popup_allowed_events change click dblclick mouseup reset submit keypress extensions.lastAppVersion 4.0b9pre gfx.direct2d.disabled true layers.accelerate-all false layers.accelerate-none true network.cookie.prefsMigrated true places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages 255617 privacy.sanitize.migrateFx3Prefs true Graphics Adapter Description ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 Vendor ID 1002 Device ID 68a1 Adapter RAM 1024 Adapter Drivers atiu9p64 aticfx64 aticfx64 atiu9pag aticfx32 aticfx32 atiumd64 atidxx64 atidxx64 atiumdag atidxx32 atidxx32 atiumdva atiumd6a atitmm64 Driver Version 8.712.0.0 Driver Date 3-2-2010 Direct2D Enabled false DirectWrite Enabled false GPU Accelerated Windows 0/1
Went to AMD site to search for drivers and was pointed at "Catalyst Mobility Suite (64 bits)". Installed. Installer shrunk resolution to 800x600, then complained at exit about drivers not being installed (or something like that), but on reboot resolution is back to normal and I see a new version of drivers: Adapter Drivers aticfx64 aticfx64 aticfx64 aticfx32 aticfx32 aticfx32 atiumd64 atidxx64 atidxx64 atiumdag atidxx32 atidxx32 atiumdva atiumd6a atitmm64 Driver Version 8.801.0.0 Driver Date (blank in about:support: Windows says it's from 11/25/10) Minefield is still a mess, alas.
What you want to try is uninstall something called 'Stardoks' judging from this thread. http://www.nextbench.net/t5/HP-Envy-Notebooks/how-to-remove-hp-envy-theme-in-windows-7/m-p/54434
Yes--going into "Stardock MyColors" and switching from "HP Envy theme" to "Restore Windows Default Theme" (default Aero look) is the answer both to making my laptop looks normal, AND to fixing HW acceleration. I now seem to have no problems with HW acceleration. about:support now says Direct2D Enabled true DirectWrite Enabled true GPU Accelerated Windows 1/1 Direct3D 10 Of course, we still don't know if this would have worked with the older ATI drivers. If you want me to rollback the drivers I can (I'll probably just restore the whole Windows install using the restore disk.)
Summary: Driver crashes with ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5850 and/or HP Envy theme → HP Envy theme (StarDocks) breaks hardware acceleration
I think it is fair to assume that the old drivers would have worked just fine for you like for everybody else. 'Stardock' and the stuff it's doing is clearly the major cause of problems here. I'm not sure I have a good idea of what to do about this. Stardock must really be doing some pretty nasty stuff to be causing this.
Perhaps if we could block whatever DLL is getting loaded to do all the nastiness here, we can avoid the firefox window getting the horrible Stardocks interaction and make things work. Bsmedberg, do you suppose dll blocklisting can work for something like that? Jason: any chance you can figure out if there's any obvious dlls loaded by the program that you think belong to 'stardock'.
Jason: One more question, could you check if the IE9 beta works for you with the theme 'on'? I'm curious about this since I'm probably going to contact Stardock about these issues.
Been a while since I've developed on Windows: what's the best way to get a list of the DLLs that Minefield is running with?
IE 9 beta dies immediately ("Internet Explorer has stopped working") when Envy theme is on :) Works fine with Windoze default theme. I'd really forgotten what a circus Windows is.
Well, you really can't blame them considering somebody installed something that basically hacks the OS apart! :) I'll contact Stardock anyway.
Bug 577509 was a previous Stardock bug with Firefox 4, but about drawing in the titlebar, not hardware acceleration. They fixed that one, so there's some hope for this one.
Bas, is there still any work left for us to do here, or should we WONTFIX this?
QA Contact: thebes → bas.schouten
Stardock did not reply to the issue I raised with them. I don't really want to care about their hackery, so WONTFIX.
Status: NEW → RESOLVED
Closed: 14 years ago
Resolution: --- → WONTFIX
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