Pale moon messed up looks on windows 7

[Geroom]

Hello, I am using an ancient computer here with windows 7 64 bit SP1. Palemoon (32-bit) worked fine until I upgraded to 33.4.0. The browser loads but the view is messed up, I mean completely black window with broken icons and texts. I tried clean install as well, deleted all the data that can be found at Appdata, so i can start fresh but the problem still there. So, I am just wondering whether this is from palemoon or the pc is kicking the bucket

[BenFenner]

The four Windows 7 machines I have are working fine, but they are running 64-bit PM...

[Massacre]

Well, it works after update (Windows 7 SP1 x64, Pale Moon 32-bit), maybe something wrong went with your specific setup.

[Moonchild]

OP: Do you have all applicable Windows 7 updates installed, too? Or is it a baseline service pack 1?
Since you're running a 64-bit operating system, have you tried using the 64-bits version of Pale Moon?

[Geroom]

OP: Do you have all applicable Windows 7 updates installed, too? Or is it a baseline service pack 1?
Since you're running a 64-bit operating system, have you tried using the 64-bits version of Pale Moon?

Yeah, all updated with UpdatePack7R2 and I tried 64-bit version but it crashed because my cpu doesn't support it anymore, i mean the thing you guys added in the latest palemoon version

Here's a screenshot https://ibb.co/xf8Jd1h

[GStathops]

Oops .. happens here also, on Win7 fully updated 32bit machine
Upon updating (internal updater) to 33.4.0 , Pale Moon doesn't work,

ScreenShot.jpg

had to install 33.3.1 32 bit on top to succesfully work again ..

On other Win7 64bit PC after update to 33.4.0 had no problem..

[Moonchild]

That's a real headscratcher.
Do you have the latest DirectX runtime installed as well that's available for Windows 7? It does seem like an issue with hardware acceleration. We didn't really touch anything there in our code this cycle.

Have you tried starting in safe mode? (Hold down SHIFT while launching the browser, then "continue in safe mode") If that comes up with a proper display, can you please:

1. Try going into preferences, advanced, and in the "General" tab, deselect "use hardware acceleration when available", and restarting the browser. That should solve the issue for you for the moment.
2. Go into Help in the application menu, choose "Troubleshooting information" in the submenu, and use "Copy as text" to copy the information there and paste it in a reply?

The only thing I can think of at the moment is that this build switched Windows SDK for compatibility with Windows 11 24H2, and that that somehow broke it... but only for some people? I'd expect that to be across the board (and we'd be much more likely to find out during testing in that case), but this is intermittent, which makes little sense...

[Pete321]

Hello, I especially registered because I have the same problem on Win7 machine (64 bit, all updates installed). Browser is unusable now. Please look into this!

I use Palemoon browser for maybe up to 15-20 years now, first time this is happening

[/img]

pale.jpg

[Moonchild]

Please look into this!

I am looking into this.

It's just unknown at this point what is causing it. I can't reproduce it myself in a VM, so it's probably something only happening on bare metal.

[Pete321]

That's a real headscratcher.
Do you have the latest DirectX runtime installed as well that's available for Windows 7? It does seem like an issue with hardware acceleration. We didn't really touch anything there in our code this cycle.

Have you tried starting in safe mode? (Hold down SHIFT while launching the browser, then "continue in safe mode") If that comes up with a proper display, can you please:

1. Try going into preferences, advanced, and in the "General" tab, deselect "use hardware acceleration when available", and restarting the browser. That should solve the issue for you for the moment.
2. Go into Help in the application menu, choose "Troubleshooting information" in the submenu, and use "Copy as text" to copy the information there and paste it in a reply?

The only thing I can think of at the moment is that this build switched Windows SDK for compatibility with Windows 11 24H2, and that that somehow broke it... but only for some people? I'd expect that to be across the board (and we'd be much more likely to find out during testing in that case), but this is intermittent, which makes little sense...

From my side:

• HW ACC is off here by default
  Safe Mode i have also tried, but in safe mode the browser acts the same. Even on the first window of safe mode it already responds very slow. When i try to checkmark any of the boxes it takes up to 30 seconds

pale2.jpg

[Pete321]

Oops .. happens here also, on Win7 fully updated 32bit machine
Upon updating (internal updater) to 33.4.0 , Pale Moon doesn't work,

ScreenShot.jpg

had to install 33.3.1 32 bit on top to succesfully work again ..

On other Win7 64bit PC after update to 33.4.0 had no problem..

I can confirm that reverting to 33.3.1 works.
I use 32 bit version.

[Moonchild]

Okay, if it's happening in safe mode that rules out a whole range of things. Thanks.
So it may be an issue with interacting with the compositor of windows itself then, especially if it becomes unresponsive (likely due to a driver call loop/paint storm).

I'll look into making a test build against the previous Windows SDK. We may be forced to freeze both the compiler toolchain and the SDK for 32-bit if that solves it. That's not a good long-term prospect, of course, and I'm not sure what it will do for Windows 11 compatibility for those people wanting/needing to run a 32-bit browser on it.

[Moonchild]

Can people who are having issues please check if this version works for them?
https://ftp.palemoon.org/publicbeta/palemoon-unstable-SDK22621-33.4.0.1.win32.7z

[Pete321]

Can people who are having issues please check if this version works for them?
https://ftp.palemoon.org/publicbeta/palemoon-unstable-SDK22621-33.4.0.1.win32.7z

This works here!

[Moonchild]

This works here!

Okay! Means I can fix this with the planned release of 33.4.0.1

Ultimately this wouldn't be a big problem since it only seems to impact 32-bit, and Windows 11 isn't released as 32-bit anyway, so any potential compat issues if backwards compatibility becomes a problem for it would just be a limitation of running windows 11.

[BenFenner]

OP: Do you have all applicable Windows 7 updates installed, too? Or is it a baseline service pack 1?

I'm not the OP, but in case this is useful, the 4 Windows machines I have running PM 33.4.0 (64-bit) properly on are very old versions.
Specifically: Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit) Version 6.1 (Build 7601: Service pack 1)

[Moonchild]

Thanks, that's useful information.

It does seem that some of the people running into this are the same people who were having crashing issues with the later compiler toolchains. So there's something odd about their O.S. or hardware that really really doesn't like later compilers or runtimes.

Can everyone who's affected by this issue please list their specific hardware and OS installation?

Code: Select all

CPU:
GPU:
Exact Windows 7 version (run "winver" to get it):

I'm trying to find a commonality between them.

[suzyne]

I have an ancient Windows 7 laptop sitting at the bottom of a cupboard. To see if I could duplicate the problem and supply some extra information, I got it out and installed Pale Moon 33.4.0 (32-bit).

The latest 32 bit Pale Moon works fine on it with no video issues. Since it is working, I have not included any troubleshooting information here.

[Moonchild]

33.4.0.1 should fix these issues on the 32-bit builds. I just hope people follow through and provide the info, because it is going to be pivotal in knowing if 32-bit is a dead end or if we can actually solve this issue.

[Geroom]

Just downloaded the latest version and it works, posting from it. Thanks. Here's the information about my ancient PC if it helps:

CPU : Core 2 duo E7500 2.93 GHz
GPU : Nvidia Geforce GT 240
Winver : Windows 7 version 6.1 build 7601 : Service pack 1, all win updates and Directx are installed.

oh one more thing, i tried to open palemoon with safe moon before installing the latest one, it still had the same problem, black window.