My Mozilla Firefox is kinda buggy!!! What could be the reason?
My Mozilla Firefox is behaving weird lately. I don't know how to explain this so I posted a photo below. This happens only when I open two or more TABS. When one tab is opened everything looks fine. But when I open another tab I can see small squares that are changing their position and show mostly in the navigation toolbar but sometimes also inside the browser (as in this case).
I have no clue what this could be. I tried to update my Firefox, than completely uninstall it and instal everything from scratch. Nothing changed.
This doesn't show up in Internet Explorer 11 or in latest Chrome but only in Firefox.
I guess it might be some other program that is associated with Firefox but I can't find the solution.
If anyone has had similar experience please let me know how you solved it.
P.S. Hope you can see the small squares on this photo. I marked them with the red arrows.
I already tried to solve this problem and asked for help via Stack Overflow but couldn't find the solution. Here is a link to my question there: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/29448005/my-mozilla-firefox-is-kinda-buggy-what-could-be-the-reason
I really hope someone can help me to solve this problem. I love Firefox and just don't want to use other browsers but these bugs are so annoying!!! Please help.
Chosen solution
Time to do some basic troubleshooting to locate which of your customizations (or which combination of mods) is causing that.
Try Firefox Safe Mode to see if the problem goes away. Firefox Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode that temporarily turns off hardware acceleration, resets some settings, and disables add-ons (extensions and themes).
If Firefox is open, you can restart in Firefox Safe Mode from the Help menu:
- Click the menu button
, click Help 
and select Restart with Add-ons Disabled.
If Firefox is not running, you can start Firefox in Safe Mode as follows:
- On Windows: Hold the Shift key when you open the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
- On Mac: Hold the option key while starting Firefox.
- On Linux: Quit Firefox, go to your Terminal and run firefox -safe-mode
(you may need to specify the Firefox installation path e.g. /usr/lib/firefox)
When the Firefox Safe Mode window appears, select "Start in Safe Mode".
If the issue is not present in Firefox Safe Mode, your problem is probably caused by an extension, theme, or hardware acceleration. Please follow the steps in the Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems article to find the cause.
To exit Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before opening Firefox for normal use again.
When you figure out what's causing your issues, please let us know. It might help others with the same problem.
Read this answer in context 👍 2All Replies (2)
Chosen Solution
Time to do some basic troubleshooting to locate which of your customizations (or which combination of mods) is causing that.
Try Firefox Safe Mode to see if the problem goes away. Firefox Safe Mode is a troubleshooting mode that temporarily turns off hardware acceleration, resets some settings, and disables add-ons (extensions and themes).
If Firefox is open, you can restart in Firefox Safe Mode from the Help menu:
- Click the menu button , click Help and select Restart with Add-ons Disabled.
If Firefox is not running, you can start Firefox in Safe Mode as follows:
- On Windows: Hold the Shift key when you open the Firefox desktop or Start menu shortcut.
- On Mac: Hold the option key while starting Firefox.
- On Linux: Quit Firefox, go to your Terminal and run firefox -safe-mode
(you may need to specify the Firefox installation path e.g. /usr/lib/firefox)
When the Firefox Safe Mode window appears, select "Start in Safe Mode".
If the issue is not present in Firefox Safe Mode, your problem is probably caused by an extension, theme, or hardware acceleration. Please follow the steps in the Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems article to find the cause.
To exit Firefox Safe Mode, just close Firefox and wait a few seconds before opening Firefox for normal use again.
When you figure out what's causing your issues, please let us know. It might help others with the same problem.
Hi there and thanks for your reply! I tried to start a Firefox in Safe Mode as you suggested and everything looked normal. So I proceeded with Troubleshoot. As the first option in Troubleshoot was to turn off the hardware acceleration I unchecked the Use hardware acceleration when available box and now it seems that my Firefox runs perfectly normal. Woohoo! It's such a relief not to look at those annoying bugs anymore! I haven't tried other Troubleshoot options as this solved my problem and made me happy.
Now I wonder why this happened? It was all normal until a year ago, or so. And then it started to show these little annoying bugs.
If I leave the "Use hardware acceleration when available" box unchecked will that influence the speed and the overall performance of my browsing??? Or would you recommend me to install the updates for my graphic drivers??? As my two older laptops died because of graphic cards I am afraid to do anything involved with graphic card at all. Hope you understand.
Thank you very much for your help! It solved my problem and made my day after months of troubles. Wish I have contacted the Mozilla Support earlier!