829905 - Firefox 18 Crash when used with Nvidia Card in Nvidia Optimus configuration (Intel driver 9.17.10.2932)

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Description

[nkefalas]

Attachment: graphic_driver_reports.txt

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.11 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/23.0.1271.97 Safari/537.11

Steps to reproduce:

Firefox 18 (release channel) always crashes after a few seconds, when it is used with Nvidia Card in a laptop with Nvidia Optimus configuration. Sometimes the Intel graphics driver also crashes and restarts. When Intel Graphics is selected in Nvidia's control panel Firefox is stable.

Submitted crash reports:
bp-1617230b-d117-4096-881a-cdf572130112
bp-117c98aa-5c02-4855-8fee-bb1752130112

Comment 1

[Scoobidiver (away)]

It's similar to bug 763585, bug 781198 and bug 829508.
Is it a regression in Firefox 18 or caused by a recent driver update?

More reports at: https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/list?signature=igd10umd32.dll%400x37b61c

Comment 2

[nkefalas]

No crashes started as soon i updated to Firefox 18, afterwards i updated also the drivers to latest releases with no effect.

(In reply to Scoobidiver from comment #1)
> It's similar to bug 763585, bug 781198 and bug 829508.
> Is it a regression in Firefox 18 or caused by a recent driver update?
> 
> More reports at:
> https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/list?signature=igd10umd32.
> dll%400x37b61c

Comment 3

[nkefalas]

(In reply to nkefalas from comment #2)
> No crashes started as soon i updated to Firefox 18, afterwards i updated
> also the drivers to latest releases with no effect.
> 
> (In reply to Scoobidiver from comment #1)
> > It's similar to bug 763585, bug 781198 and bug 829508.
> > Is it a regression in Firefox 18 or caused by a recent driver update?
> > 
> > More reports at:
> > https://crash-stats.mozilla.com/report/list?signature=igd10umd32.
> > dll%400x37b61c

Crashes also happen when Intel Graphics card is selected from Nvidia's control panel, but they are less frequent. It may be related to bug 763585, bug 781198 and bug 829508 but in my case frequent crashes started with Firefox 18.

bp-79def2b1-1ced-45cb-8dea-0ef922130112

Comment 4

[Scoobidiver (away)]

(In reply to nkefalas from comment #2)
> No crashes started as soon i updated to Firefox 18, afterwards i updated
> also the drivers to latest releases with no effect.
This sentence is not clear to me.
Do you mean crashes started as soon you updated to Firefox 18?

Comment 5

[nkefalas]

(In reply to Scoobidiver from comment #4)
> (In reply to nkefalas from comment #2)
> > No crashes started as soon i updated to Firefox 18, afterwards i updated
> > also the drivers to latest releases with no effect.
> This sentence is not clear to me.
> Do you mean crashes started as soon you updated to Firefox 18?

Yes crashes started as soon I updated to Firefox 18.

Comment 6

[Scoobidiver (away)]

Does it happen in Safe Mode (see https://support.mozilla.org/kb/troubleshoot-firefox-issues-using-safe-mode)? I assume no.
Does it happen with a new profile (see https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles)?

Comment 7

[nkefalas]

It also crashes with a new profile, crashes did not happen in safe mode.

I tried safe mode and Firefox did not crash.

Comment 8

[Scoobidiver (away)]

To prevent crashes, turn off HW acceleration: https://support.mozilla.org/kb/upgrade-graphics-drivers-use-hardware-acceleration#w_i-still-have-problems-with-my-graphics-card-in-firefox

Comment 9

[nkefalas]

(In reply to Scoobidiver from comment #8)
> To prevent crashes, turn off HW acceleration:
> https://support.mozilla.org/kb/upgrade-graphics-drivers-use-hardware-
> acceleration#w_i-still-have-problems-with-my-graphics-card-in-firefox

Crashes stopped after disabling HW acceleration.
Is there any more help i can provide? I can run any debug tool that will help debugging the issue and generating reports.

Comment 10

[nkefalas]

> Submitted crash reports:
> bp-1617230b-d117-4096-881a-cdf572130112
> bp-117c98aa-5c02-4855-8fee-bb1752130112

I did a new Windows Installation and installed latest Intel ang Nvidia graphics drivers and Firefox does not crash with HW acceleration enabled.

After applying windows updates i noticed that the update http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2505438 it was not selected for installation, but some time later it was automatically selected (unknown how) and I disabled it.

The update description is:

On a computer that is running Windows 7 or Windows Server 2008 R2, you may experience slow performance in applications that use the DirectWrite API (for example, Windows Internet Explorer 9). Performance traces show that each application is loading all the available fonts instead of relying on the FontCache service to render the fonts.

And most important:
Known Issue
Important After you install KB2505438, applications that render text by using DirectWrite may encounter errors, including application crashes. This is because the hotfix package does not contain an updated version of another driver. The hotfix package that is described in KB2454826 contains the updated version of this driver.

Since Firefox uses Direct2D for HW acceleration, installing the update KB2505438 without installing the KB2454826 may is the cause for the crashes.

Comment 11

[John Navas]

I'm seeing this issue with Firefox ESR 45.7.0 on a ThinkPad T420s running Windows 8.1 x64.
Graphics are Intel HD 3000 (9.17.10.2843) and NVIDIA NVS 4200M (10.18.13.5445) Optimus.

Because I was getting some display corruption with default Intel HD graphics​,
and since this machine also has an Nvidia adapter with Optimus technology,
I configured Optimus to use the Nvidia adapter for Firefox,
which fixed the display corruption issue (at the cost of increased power consumption),
but then I started getting crashes in plugin-container.exe.

Tried disabling extensions, but that did not solve the problem.

I switched back to the Intel HD adapter and the corruption returned,
but the crashes went away. Not a terrific trade-off,
but then I remembered that Firefox has a graphics setting:
     Options → Advanced → Use hardware acceleration when available
Unchecked that option, which had no apparent impact on performance,
and the crashes go away along with the display corruption.

Diagnosis: Firefox has issues with hardware acceleration
that may be exacerbated by Nvidia Optimus.

Comment 12

[Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] 🇵🇱 - (please needinfo? me - so I will see your comment/reply/question/etc.)]

I'm marking this bug as WORKSFORME as bug crashlog signature didn't appear from a long time (over half year) in Firefox.

Comment 13

[John Navas]

(In reply to Virtual_ManPL [:Virtual] - (ni? me) from comment #12)
> I'm marking this bug as WORKSFORME as bug crashlog signature didn't appear
> from a long time (over half year) in Firefox.

Did you not see my Comment 11?
ESR consistently crashes for me when hardware acceleration is turned on.
But no matter. This is the final straw that has now driven me to Chrome.