Pale Moon forum

Or it is too me, since I never experienced something like this before, Palemoon was working fine until I restarted my computer, windows configured some updates. After that.. this happened... I included screenshots because it's tough to explain this.

Palemoon default startup page
http://tinypic.com/r/2vi2lwx/5

Facebook.com/ESPN.com (it displayed the same thing.)
http://tinypic.com/r/ekev06/5




Nothing will display, to show any images I need to rollover them with my mouse, the rest is black, other sites nothing at all will load just a blank, dark page. The same issued with the my normal version of firefox, I completely uninstalled both completely but the problem still persists, youtube looks like a bunch of jumbled up videos.. Google Chrome works fine..

My OS is Windows 7 service pack 1
AMD A6-3420M APU
6gb ram

Most likely this is related to the "Windows 7 platform update" that got installed. Your GPU falls in the ranges most affected by this issue caused by the (non-security) Windows Update. There has been a security update to the platform update that most likely pulled in the original patch as well. (black screens are common if your acceleration is partially disabled because of the hardware)

What you should do is follow the instructions outlined on the Microsoft page to uninstall the platform update.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2670838/en-us

How to uninstall update 2670838
To uninstall update 2670838, follow these steps:

Click Start, click Control Panel, click Programs, and then click Programs and Features.
Click View installed updates.
Click Update for Microsoft Windows (KB 2670838), and then click Uninstall.

Yes, update 2670838 looks the most likely culprit.

If you have IE10 already installed, I'm pretty sure you'll need to uninstall it before rebooting and then removing 2670838, I did. I then went on to hide both from showing again; there's also method of blocking IE10 in case they offer it again (though MS may change tack and force-install it somehow), I'll dig out the block 'patch' now.

Strangely, I do not have that update and I did check quite a few times for it.. also my GPU is not one of the one's listed.

Your GPU is one that suffers from problems with the update, specifically. Your APU has an integrated Radeon HD 6520. Even though it is not a listed processor that causes blue screens, it is still one that would suffer from rendering issues specifically in Gecko-based browsers.

If that is not the issue though, then there must be a different reason. Can you please check what exactly was updated before this problem started? Can you check the Windows Update history to see what was recently installed? Considering your GPU is entry-level, you may have to disable hardware acceleration in the browser. First, though, I suggest you try disabling Azure for page content, which has a good chance of fixing the issue.

To do this:

1. In the address bar, type about:config and press enter.
2. Find gfx.content.azure.enabled and double-click it to set it to false
3. Also find gfx.canvas.azure.backends and set it to "cairo" (default is "direct2d,cairo", so just remove the "direct2d," part)
4. Completely exit and restart the browser

If that doesn't work, clear the preference "Use hardware acceleration when available" (uncheck it) in Options -> Advanced, tab General.

Hello, sorry for not replying in a few days, I could not go to the browser and change the settings because the screen was still all black, I also could not identify the update that caused the problem because there were multiple updates for my computer that day. I ended up doing a system restore from a few days before the updates and it now works.

Okay, well at least keep a close eye on windows updates, set it to not automatically install but just notify, and check carefully what it wants to install to prevent this from happening again - possibly install them one at a time, see if you can find out what the issue is.

Previously my settings were to not update automatically, I don't know what changed them. I will try to locate the issue today.

Notify Only is not the best option.

NEVER CHECK FOR UPDATES is better - though I fear this is only a "flag" which M.S. may ignore when they wish to.

Several years ago System Administrators of some large enterprises found their their user base had lost use of their computers.

The computers had been configured for Notify Only,
and the practice was for I.T. to install updates on test machines and confirm that all essential applications function before they allowed the updates to run on user computers.
M.S. only revealed after the chaotic fiasco that they took "Notify Only" as authority to make "essential updates" to the update mechanism,
and this particular patch had such an intention but an unintended consequence.

Personally I have ever since used NEVER CHECK FOR UPDATES,
and only nudged into Notify Only when I have seen updates published and then waited a few days to see what causes howls of protests,
and then before I unleash I create a partition image backup just in case.

Alan, anomalies aside (and what you talked about is news to me, actually - I never heard of this happening in all my years of sysadmin), "notify only" is better than "never check", unless you, yourself, are always vigilant in checking for updates manually (at least every few days).
For most people, being notified is a good thing, and as far as I know nothing ever gets automatically installed unless you choose the top choice "install updates automatically" with a date and time. Notify only doesn't even download anything so it's not possible for anything to be installed in the background

So my advice, still, is to use notify only.

My wife and I have three computers. Two desktops and a laptop (her's). Microsoft update KB2670838 caused a problem on one of my desktops so I decided to uninstall it. It wouldn't uninstall correctly. It froze my desktop for an hour since I let it run hoping it would get past the frozen point. It never did. I had to use a hard shutdown.

The result of the hard shutdown was a corrupted updater because the hard shutdown negated the "Don't turn off your computer". Since I couldn't install MS updates anymore, I had to reload Windows 7 via a backup image on an external hard drive since the problem update wasn't on the backup image yet for this particular desktop. Uninstalling the update on my other desktop and my wife's laptop never caused a problem.

This is why I now have "Check for updates, but let me choose whether to download and install them". This way, I can google to see if some of the MS updates are causing problems on other people's computers since I now wait 24 hours before I install the MS updates.

Notify Only is as good option for most people - I just do not trust that M.S. will always obey what is generally considered to be the purpose of the setting values.

I only mentioned this problem to show that "Notify Only" will keep most updates at bay - but if Microsoft really thinks you would want it then you get it.
I suspect that M.S. might have really thought everyone would want a "Platform Update" so they installed it.

I only know of one such incident about 6 years ago.

Also perhaps one year before that incident there was similar outrage over a similar disaster for sysadmins that had selected the option to choose WHEN to install,
and on Monday morning they found MS had installed regardless over the weekend.
On that occasion I believe the excuse was that the updates had been downloaded and notifications of "ready to install" were intended,
but there were so many disastrous vulnerabilities to patch and so much to download that the MS servers had been overloaded and took a long time to complete,
and perhaps the eventual notifications had not been seen (or not been launched),
and when the users shut down their computers then Updater system took over and completed (a disastrous) installation.

Regards
Alan