hello Ascention, some other users who have recently updated the graphics driver for their ati hardware (to ati catalyst version 12.8) have reported similar crashes. please try disabling hardware acceleration in firefox > options > advanced > general & see if this resolves the issue of frequent crashes for the moment until ati releases a new driver.

This is not something I know the details of, but I have noticed posts, and bugs filed relating to Catalyst and to video driver problems.

What I can say is that as a workaround it will be worth trying disabling hardware acceleration on Firefox, hopefully that will prevent the crashes.

• To disable hardware acceleration see Troubleshoot extensions, themes and hardware acceleration issues to solve common Firefox problems_turn-off-hardware-acceleration
• You could also consider experimenting with either upgrading your graphics drivers to the latest version, or alternatively rolling back to earlier working versions Upgrade your graphics drivers to use hardware acceleration and WebGL

I normally advise users not to post in Bugs, it is usually against the etiquette you could however post a short comment in Bug789251 and cross link to this thread, in case anyone wishes to contact you about this because it appears engineers are, or were, having problems in reproducing some of these crashes. (If you are interested in doing so you will need an email address to comment in a bug, maybe consider a disposable one. Or if you prefer I will add a comment, on your behalf and you can keep correspondence either within this thread or by PrivateMessage{whilst signed in} instead. )

Thank you very much madperson and John99,

Deselecting the hardware acceleration solved the issue, and Firefox has not crashed since doing this. (FYI: I did not have to disable WebGL).

madperson:

You are correct the version of ATI Catalyst is 12.8, and is the latest version, so hopefully the tech team there will put out an update to resolve this issue. Appreciate the advice, thank you!

John99:

Thanks for posting the links, this made it very easy to quickly read up on the options and procedures, much appreciated. Thank you also for the guidance on posting etiquette for "Bugs", and the suggestion to link a post to this thread, this is very helpful. I really appreciate you taking the time to provide all of this information.

Kind Regards

Ascention

P.S. I chose John99's post as the chosen solution because of the easy to follow links etc which other users can easily follow. I certainly value madperson's quick response which addressed the core problem.

John99,

Please do post a comment on my behalf with a link to this thread, I'd be happy to participate and provide details for the engineers. Private message will probably get my attention more quickly, so please do reach out if I can assist.

Best Regards

Ascention

Ascention,

Glad it is working again, even if that is without hardware acceleration. I have added a comment to the Bug.

Thanks for offering to help. I will leave it to the engineers now, but you may like to watch the bug for any progress and news of any solution.

Best Regards
John

For forum cross referencing purposes

• Typical Report for CrashID bc2f99fb-f705-44f1-936a-a90a12120922
  • Crash Signature: (null signature)
    Firefox 15.0.1 Crash Report [@ EMPTY: no crashing thread identified; corrupt dump ]
  • Related Bug 789251 - HWA Crash, 0-byte minidump with Catalyst 12.8 (8.982)

I updated the BIOS and graphics software on my Compaq CQ58 laptop with onboard AMD Radeon 7310 HD graphics which appeared to have improved matters but it then reoccured.

Windows Update does NOT have this later driver. You need to download off Compaq ( 200Mb) and run the executable rather than rely on windows update to deliver it.

Use Hardware Acceleration in FF > Tools > Options > Advanced > was ALREADY TURNED OFF since FF 17.0.2 or so, annoying flickering issues were getting on my tits and that improved the flicker. FF was stable across 17.0.2 18.xxx and then went down like a bitch when I autoupdated to 19.0 in last few days.

Tried both Acceleration on and off. Must now abandon FF until 19.0.1 is issued. I don't remember this issue with 17 ( I may have gone straight to 17.0.1 or .2 not 17.0 and certainly not with 18.