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Firefox window sometimes does not redraw after I close a tab

  • 2 replies
  • 2 have this problem
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  • Last reply by Artfunkel

Artfunkel
Artfunkel
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This started a while ago and has persisted through multiple updates of Firefox and my display drivers. It's straightforward: sometimes when I close a tab (via keyboard or mouse) Firefox does not redraw its window and I am left looking at a "ghost" version of the tab.

If I move my mouse over the window I can see it responding to links in the tab that Firefox has switched to, but the display will not update until I do something to trigger the browser to redraw its whole window (e.g. resizing it).

I am using Firefox 36 beta and have a GTX 560 Ti graphics card with the latest Nvidia drivers. As I mentioned above though, this issue has been around for a while and is not specific to the version of Firefox (I don't normally use betas) or drivers I am currently using. I don't have problems in any other program.

Has anyone else experienced this?

This started a while ago and has persisted through multiple updates of Firefox and my display drivers. It's straightforward: sometimes when I close a tab (via keyboard or mouse) Firefox does not redraw its window and I am left looking at a "ghost" version of the tab. If I move my mouse over the window I can see it responding to links in the tab that Firefox has switched to, but the display will not update until I do something to trigger the browser to redraw its whole window (e.g. resizing it). I am using Firefox 36 beta and have a GTX 560 Ti graphics card with the latest Nvidia drivers. As I mentioned above though, this issue has been around for a while and is not specific to the version of Firefox (I don't normally use betas) or drivers I am currently using. I don't have problems in any other program. Has anyone else experienced this?

All Replies (2)

cor-el
cor-el
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  • Top 10 Contributor
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You can try to disable OMTC and leave hardware acceleration in Firefox enabled.

  • about:config page: layers.offmainthreadcomposition.enabled = false

You can open the about:config page via the location/address bar. You can accept the warning and click "I'll be careful" to continue.

Start Firefox in Safe Mode to check if one of the extensions (Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Extensions) or if hardware acceleration is causing the problem.

  • Switch to the DEFAULT theme: Firefox/Tools > Add-ons > Appearance
  • Do NOT click the Reset button on the Safe Mode start window

See also:

Artfunkel
Artfunkel Question owner
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I disabled OMTC and immediately had two GPU driver crashes (1, 2), but things seem to have settled down now. I'll have to wait and see if it helps. Thanks for the suggestion.

Given how intermittent the issue is, I'm not going to disable all my extensions!

Modified by Artfunkel