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Firefox broswer filled with stray moving pixels

  • 5 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 12 views
  • Last reply by Saragato

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Just an hour ago I was browsing a web page and noticed that a few stray pixels were showing up, then going away or moving sort of in a confetti effect. When I scroll it gets worse and the pixels pile up and sometimes slow down the entire browser. I cleared my cache and updated Firefox and all my add-ons, restarted the browser, and even made sure it wasn't my monitor by watching my desktop, opening other programs, and even checking in other browsers. Only Firefox is causing this problem. It's really annoying. Is there any way to fix this?

Just an hour ago I was browsing a web page and noticed that a few stray pixels were showing up, then going away or moving sort of in a confetti effect. When I scroll it gets worse and the pixels pile up and sometimes slow down the entire browser. I cleared my cache and updated Firefox and all my add-ons, restarted the browser, and even made sure it wasn't my monitor by watching my desktop, opening other programs, and even checking in other browsers. Only Firefox is causing this problem. It's really annoying. Is there any way to fix this?

Chosen solution

Ah, I think I may have found the problem. I checked my graphics driver and it had an update. After updating it and restarting my computer the problem seems to have gone away. Probably should have checked it sooner but I thought it was a browser problem since it was only occurring in Firefox. Thanks for your help!

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All Replies (5)

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Could be an incompatibility with your graphics card drivers. Could you try disabling the use of hardware graphics acceleration in Firefox?

You usually need to restart Firefox in order for this to take effect, so save all work first (e.g., mail you are composing, online documents you're editing, etc.).

orange Firefox button or classic Tools menu > Options > Advanced

On the "General" mini-tab, uncheck the box for "Use hardware acceleration when available"

If you restart Firefox, is the issue resolved?

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I unchecked the box and restarted Firefox but I am still getting the pixels.

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Sorry to send you back to the options dialog a second time, but you might also test with Smooth Scrolling turned off.

Could you check whether you have any unrecognized extensions? It might be best to simply disable everything nonessential here:

orange Firefox button or classic Tools menu > Add-ons > Extensions category

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Turned off smooth scrolling, no change. No unrecognized devices or outdated ones.

I did notice however after turning off the scrolling that the pixels are appearing if I am scrolling past images or videos, or if they're simply on the screen such as on Facebook. They no longer seem to just come at random but just around images or a site that has a lot of graphics in the background.

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Chosen Solution

Ah, I think I may have found the problem. I checked my graphics driver and it had an update. After updating it and restarting my computer the problem seems to have gone away. Probably should have checked it sooner but I thought it was a browser problem since it was only occurring in Firefox. Thanks for your help!