graphics display driver stops while doing simple browsing with Firefox
HI, I use a powerful Dell portable graphics workstation (M6800) w/ Nvidia Quadro4K card, and Windows 8.1-x64. When browsing with Firefox 58 and/or 59 beta (no heavy video or other workload) the mouse cursor first freezes, then the monitor goes black, and finally Windows signals the display driver had to be restarted, while turrning the monitor back on again full luminosity ! (however some apps in the background, like email, don't display correctly and have to be restarted, while Firefox comes back whole, fortunately). My drivers are all up-to-date : I just did a clean re-install of Windows, BIOS and Dell driver packages. This Firefox incident can happen multiple times during a short browsing session, like 3 times in 10 minutes, or not at all for a half-day. The only fix I can think of is to set the driver's TDR to 10 seconds instead of 2 in the Windows registry, as suggested in some chatrooms. BUT it only is a workaround, not a fix, and Firefox should monitor its calls to the GPU in a more effective way that prevents such mini-crashes. Thank you for your interest. JLT Paris, FR
Réiteach roghnaithe
Hello
A clean reinstall of FF 58 did improve the situation: no more than one or two NVIDIA driver crashes per day.... yet FF is still "slow" loading and displaying web pages (especially when they're heavily "multimedia").
Then FF offered to install the new 59 release (surprisingly it self-installed the x86/32-bit version): nothing changed then...... except I noticed this was the wrong FF version for my workstation and did a manual uninstall + install of the 64-bit version: now I don't experience lags and delays anymore (inspite of the fact that FF now launches 4 instances instead of 6 previously with the x86 version ). What remains to be seen is if Windows goes along with FF calls to the GPU and stops timing out the pilot. I'm pretty confident - if these crashes reoccur, I'll be left with the option of tweaking the timeout delay from 2 to 8 seconds in the Windows registry.
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Ok, how was your FF installed? Was this a clean FF install and also using beta is for testing purpose only and can lead to unintended problems. And did you install the right GPU driver for the card with the latest driver? Video problems aren't a browser issue but a GPU driver issue.
Hi - thx so much foryour quick reply. The display issue appeared with both FF 58 and 59-beta. And no, it was not a clean FF install after a Windows 8.1 repair a couple of days ago, although I remember my profile and bookmarks had been wiped out in the process. I'd previously tried the beta version in the hope the display crash would go away, but it didn't. I will try a clean reinstall as a first step. And finally yes, the NVIDIA driver is the latest one Dell would let me install, I know NVidia has an even more recent one, but it fails to install on the Dell machine (not Dell certified I guess). The way I see things is that FF puts great pressure on the GPU for some tasks or processes, and Windows has a maximum response delay of 2 seconds (the so-called "TDR" timeout detection & recovery delay) for the GPU to answer back, which apparently is not enough, given the "single shot" load from FF . Tomorrow I plan to tweak that delay to 8 seconds and see what happens for a few more days. We might argue whether this is a GPU/driver issue rather than a FF issue, yet I think FF might be inspired to break down its process requests to the GPU into smaller bits, that might improve the response time from the GPU and avoid the Windows reaction after detecting a timeout (sorry, I'm only a layman when it comes to low-level processing....). Your comments are most welcome !
As to finding what you would like in about:config is beyond me with the new code for 57+
Just to make sure have repaired your Windows version please open a Dos Prompt with a Right Click and Run as Admin. Copy/Paste or Type "SFC /SCANNOW" = sfc (space) /scannow (without quotes) and press Enter.
Please uninstall Firefox. Then Delete the Mozilla Firefox Folders in C:\Program Files and C:\Program Files(x86) Then restart system. Then run Windows Disk Cleanup. (Note: This should be Pinned and run Weekly, If never done below expect 10's of gig's (Win 10)) Then run it again and click the button that says Cleanup System Files. Note: your Firefox Profile is saved. But you should make a back up before you do :
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/back-and-restore-information-firefox-profiles
- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/export-firefox-bookmarks-to-backup-or-transfer
Reinstall with Current Release Firefox 58.0.2 with a Full Version Installer
Please let us know if this solved your issue or if need further assistance.
Réiteach Roghnaithe
Hello
A clean reinstall of FF 58 did improve the situation: no more than one or two NVIDIA driver crashes per day.... yet FF is still "slow" loading and displaying web pages (especially when they're heavily "multimedia").
Then FF offered to install the new 59 release (surprisingly it self-installed the x86/32-bit version): nothing changed then...... except I noticed this was the wrong FF version for my workstation and did a manual uninstall + install of the 64-bit version: now I don't experience lags and delays anymore (inspite of the fact that FF now launches 4 instances instead of 6 previously with the x86 version ). What remains to be seen is if Windows goes along with FF calls to the GPU and stops timing out the pilot. I'm pretty confident - if these crashes reoccur, I'll be left with the option of tweaking the timeout delay from 2 to 8 seconds in the Windows registry.