883068 - Painting is corrupted on the whole Firefox window

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Core :: Graphics, defect)

Description

[Mihai Maerean]

Attachment: screenshot

1. Open Firefox 21
2. Minimize Firefox
3. Maximize Firefox

It may be related to the fact that the size of the desktop is not very common: 2560*1440 (27" screen)

Comment 1

[Mihai Maerean]

This problem only occurs in Firefox. Other software that are being used on the same computer and are working fine are: Google Chrome, Opera, Visual Studio 2010, Notepad++, XnView, Corel PhotoImpact, Yahoo Messenger etc.

Because the monitor has a smaller dotpitch, the fonts have been enlarged in the OS to 105% (101dpi).

Comment 2

[Mihai Maerean]

Resizing the Firefox window causes a full repaint of the window and the application starts to look like it should.

Comment 3

[Loic]

Disable HWA in Firefox and test. 
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/forum-response-disable-hardware-acceleration

Comment 4

[Mihai Maerean]

Yes, disabling HWA makes the problem go away.

The video card is an AMD ATi Radeon 3850 AGP
Graphics Chipset: ATI Radeon HD 3850 AGP
Device ID: 9515
Vendor: 1002

Driver Packaging Version: 8.93-111205a-132228E-ATI
Catalyst™ Version: 12.1 (latest is 12.6)
Provider: AMD.
2D Driver Version: 6.14.10.7246
2D Driver File Path: System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Video/{8FD729BC-7B1A-428C-A7EA-771C1216BBD8}/0000
Direct3D Version: 6.14.10.0887
OpenGL Version: 6.14.10.11399
Catalyst™ Control Center Version: 2011.1205.2146.38999
AIW/VIVO WDM Driver Version: 6.14.10.6238	
AIW/VIVO WDM SP Driver Version: 6.14.10.6238

Although the video card is powerful enough to play games at 2560*1440, the ATi video drivers are a piece of sh*t. Several attempts to update the drivers have ended badly (including a full reinstall of the OS).

The OS (WinXP SP3) has with the latest updates installed.

Comment 5

[Loic]

Honestly the only thing to do is to update your GPU drivers. If you can't do that for various reasons, the best workaround is to use Firefox with HWA disabled.

Comment 6

[Mihai Maerean]

Just as a note, this behavior only appeared when I switched to the 2560*1440 screen. The same version of Firefox worked ok with the older (and smaller) screen.

Comment 7

[Mihai Maerean]

Doesn't happen anymore with Firefox 22.
It takes a whole second for the window to be redrawn after restoring the window from the minimized state (the browser's UI only appears after the page is rendered too), but at least it's rendered correctly.

Comment 8

[Loic]

Thanks for the feedback. Feel free to reopen it if the issue is back.