"troubleshooting information" is an option choice under Help in FF 4.0 -- it splats out a table when you select it; and that is one row from the table

I have a tech support question re testing my video card in to Radeon, but no answer yet.

Looked at their driver database and could not figure out which one to download.

which video card do you have? look in control panel\system\device manager\display adapter

also, a screenshot of that troubleshooting page might be helpful. i found it in my FF. pretty cool.

here it is from the "copy all to clipboard" facility:

Application Basics

Name
Firefox

Version
4.0.1

User Agent
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:2.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/4.0.1

Profile Directory

Open Containing Folder

Enabled Plugins

about:plugins

Build Configuration

about:buildconfig

Extensions

Name

Version

Enabled

ID

Modified Preferences

Name

Value

browser.places.smartBookmarksVersion
2

browser.startup.homepage_override.buildID
20110413222027

browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone
rv:2.0.1

extensions.lastAppVersion
4.0.1

network.cookie.prefsMigrated
true

places.database.lastMaintenance
1305682949

places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pa ges
128827

privacy.cpd.cookies
false

privacy.cpd.downloads
false

privacy.cpd.formdata
false

privacy.cpd.history
false

privacy.sanitize.migrateFx3Prefs
true

privacy.sanitize.timeSpan
0

Graphics

Adapter Description
ATI Radeon HD 5600 Series

Vendor ID
1002

Device ID
68d8

Adapter RAM
1024

Adapter Drivers
atiu9p64 aticfx64 aticfx64 atiu9pag aticfx32 aticfx32 atiumd64 atidxx64 atidxx64 atiumdag atidxx32 atidxx32 atiumdva atiumd6a atitmm64

Driver Version
8.700.0.0

Driver Date
1-13-2010

Direct2D Enabled
Blocked on your graphics driver. Try updating your graphics driver to version 10.6 or newer.

DirectWrite Enabled
false (6.1.7601.17563, font cache n/a)

WebGL Renderer
(WebGL unavailable)

GPU Accelerated Windows
0/2

xfx HD Radeon 5670 ZNF3 1 Gbyte is the video card descriptor

which OS are you using?

right. that is actually listed in the troubleshooting information you posted. :)

Win 7 - 64 bit

I just let Windows reinstall a video driver for the car - it selected one

also did the uninstall; reboot machine; and will download FF and try it out

I am on Chrome at the moment

never mind, i looked it up. you are using windows 7. give me a minute and i'll get the link to the video drivers you need.

Damn! It looks normal now

if you are still interested in installing video drivers, they are here:

ATI Radeon

download the catalyst suite and install.

i bet it was some .dll dealing with your video drivers. let us know if you have other issues.

no, I was wrong - it looks the same as before

maybe it's driving me crazy or causing eyestrain

I checked Yahoo Email also - same problem as before.

thanks for your help

I'm interested to hear again or from anyone else - but I think a full replacement of the graphics card may be the next step...

nah. download the catalyst suite after you've tried the stuff from mozilla, above.

ok, might as well try it

any joy?

Man your computer is always busted. Buy a Mac and be done with this.

I'd take that computer back and cram it up someone's azz.

nope, no change after installing the catalyst suite - I'd expect the Win 7 Device Mgr. to have downloaded the best / latest driver anyway.

re: Mac - I have one piece of critical software that has always required a PC with a serial port on it -- I am going to check and see if they have a Mac version of it

other issues are that my Dell XP system always worked pretty well - all this started with this new computer, its hardware, and Win 7 (and with MS Orifice 2003)

Apple makes you do things their way - until now Windows let me (with a bit more effort) do things my way, but Win 7 has forced me to do a lot of things in different ways (or not at all) and has been a tremendous hassle

Try and keep away from the windows default drivers when it comes to video cards. They are normally very dated as video drivers are frequently updated by the vendors.

You should be able to get a MAC if you want one. A USB serial port will work fine on it, and if the program you need only runs in Windows, well you can run Windows as well.

backdate your firefox to 3.X and see what happens. is there something in FF 4.x that you just have to have?

it's nicer

I'll try that tho, thx. I think this is something beyond FireFox.

- sudden onset

- affects FireFox the most, but appears to affect MS Outlook too; Chrome seems unaffected

- Fur_something test of graphics card seems ok

- yellow and some other boxes on Pelican show ok, other screen elements are missing; worst displays are in 2 different Email web sites I use.

- Goggle News is affected - boxes at top lack coloring
- Google IMage search always shows images normally
- Amazon is affected and some clickable balloons do not show up in FF (had to use Chrome to add some socks to my Wish List)
- IrfanView and Picassa seem fine; MS Word & Excel seem fine

- no matter what, I always see text boxes on the screen - it appears the fill or surrounds are the screen elements that do not display in FF

Only thing I can figure is that maybe FireFox treats the graphics card in a different way than Chrome (thought they all went thru the same Windows interface, but maybe not)

also, FireFox 4.0 worked just fine for weeks or months until this suddenly happened

(it happened after I did a backup and system image, but maybe not right after that - seems strange to infer cause there anyway)

same problems (checked 2 web sites) using FF 3.6

I did not waste (more) time by uninstalling FF 4.0, or rebooting tho...

I'd just use Chrome but there is no damn side bar for bookmarks

i'd be willing to bet that it isn't hardware. definitely software. perhaps there is a problem with the registry. who knows.

can you restore a previous image or restore point?

I hate to try that, maybe could go to an earlier system state. The problem with doing those, is you never know exactly what you all you are going to lose.

I think I'll do a mild Registry scan with Ccleaner tho.

a restore point will not lose you much, if anything.

you can always back up your documents and pictures (the only things i really care about on my computer) and do the full system restore.

reinstalled Adobe Flash player & CCleaner run, incl. their Registry Scan - no change

1st Sys. Restore - no change

Did you have anyone remote in and try and work on your machine? These vendors that use remote services often times install a service on your system to connect through. When they connect they get your desktop in 16 color mode, the problem is when they disconnect sometimes your system stays stuck in 16 color mode.

VNC does this, Symantec, Intel.. you have to disable their service, and sometimes uninstall the faux graphic driver they add on. You screen is the stuck in viewer mode, often this is coupled with lost wallpaper and missing themes in Windows.

UltraVNC • View topic - OneClick:Win7/Vista VNC Helpdesk Remote Support System

Some reference on this in the link above.

nope no svce call remote or otherwise

I was finally able to roll sys restore back far enuff to get FF looking right - that meant BEFORE MS had performed a critical system update on my system w/o my knowledge via the internet.

BUT... BUT the machine then crashed and I cannot get it restarted.

seems like a big hassle to try and move to a Mac

so, I can either buy a Dell XPS if I wait until May 30 for them to build it (and then a few more days to ship) - cost is $700

or I can go over to Office Depot or Best Buy and pick up a Compaq/hp machine

My home machine is an XPS 630i, it about 4 years old now. I've upgraded the memory recently and changed it to solid state drives, but it's still running great! (XPS support is nice as well)

your insistence that this is hardware related is amusing.

ok, so why does the system frequently fail to boot up now?

sometimes it will not even go past the very first BIOS screen

OK, that's a classic symptom of bad memory. Remove all but the minimal and try it, start adding back until it fails again. don't rely on those memory tests, they often can't do much.

fails to get past the first BIOS screen is classic overheating. could be memory, but my money is heat.

you only just now told us this, randy. this is hardware related.

that is FF 4.x, brando.

Forgot to go to pg 2... Deleted my post, I see it's FF4 now. Also saw the post where after uninstalling and reinstalling he said it's normal.

I have customers call in with the same "everything is blown up!" question. It happens when you hold CTRL for a second and move the mousewheel. Or you 'zoom in' (CTRL+ +) as some sites aren't made to 'scale'.

it only only just now happened -- at least this month; happened 1-2 months ago too - I get a large variety of erros & posted some (made me think it was the disk)

so, open it up and reseat the memory? I already did that (months) before

re: heat - how hot should it not get??

the BIOS screen shows temperature data (briefly) and it hasn't gone over 38 oC that I can see

PS - it is working right now; no idea how long that will last