[MowermanEd]

Dual booting Ubuntu with Vista Business. Up until the other day everything worked fine in Ubuntu. Now, all of a sudden, whenever I start Firefox or any another web browser the program starts but the content of the window is all black. I can move my mouse around and it will change from an arrow to a pointer when I apparently roll over a link. If I click this link all it does is open another tab that is also all black. Any ideas.

[arochester]

Try Edit>Preferences>Content>Fonts & Colours>Colour Button

Text should be black. Background should be white...

[lotuseclat79]

Hi MowermanEd,

Try this (i.e. if you can get into Edit->Preferences->Content):
Click on Colors button
In the Text color block (click on it to bring up a palette of colors): click on Yellow
In the Background block: click on one of the gray shaded colors
In the Unvisited Links block: click on the black color
In the Visited Links block: click on a blue color
Click Ok to exit Colors window
Click on Close to exit Firefox Preferences

It sounds as if you have upgraded to a new version of Firefox perhaps without saving your previous Firefox settings and profile.

-- Tom

[MowermanEd]

I imagine you are both right because I just updated everything. Unfortunately, I cannot access preferences. It's starting to look like I may have to reinstall everything.

[linuxphile]

MowermanED,

You can try moving your ~/.mozilla folder and restarting firefox. This will clear all your personal settings and bookmarks, but you'll be able to view web pages. To do this open a terminal window and issue the following

mv ~/.mozilla/firefox ~/.mozilla/firefox.bak

Restart firefox after issuing this command.
HTH

[briealeida]

Everything works OK in say, Konqueror or some other browser, right?

Also, would you reinstall everything or maybe just Firefox?

[lotuseclat79]

I think linuxphile posted the best fix. I want to hear if that fixed the problem.

-- Tom

[MowermanEd]

I think my problem is related to my new monitor. It's a Samsung 226BW 22" widescreen with a resolution of 1680x1050. The highest I can achieve in Ubuntu is 1280x10-something. When I lower the resolution the problem goes away. If I raise the resolution the problem will go away only if I resize the window to only about half to two thirds of the width of my screen. I'm running the latest nVidea driver. I don't believe Samsung has a driver for this screen either. And by the way, this problem exists with all browsers.

[linuxphile]

MowermanEd,

Are you using Desktop Effects such as compiz or beryl? If so do your problems go away if you disable the desktop effects?

I've got edgy running at 1900x1200 with no problems in Firefox. However, there are some refresh issues when running beryl, though this is generally with video playback. Also, try using the opensource driver rather than the nvidia and let us know if the problem still exists.

I would still like to hear what happens when you move your ~/.mozilla/firefox directory at the resolution you were having problems with.

[MowermanEd]

Originally Posted by linuxphile

MowermanEd,

Are you using Desktop Effects such as compiz or beryl? If so do your problems go away if you disable the desktop effects?

I've got edgy running at 1900x1200 with no problems in Firefox. However, there are some refresh issues when running beryl, though this is generally with video playback. Also, try using the opensource driver rather than the nvidia and let us know if the problem still exists.

I would still like to hear what happens when you move your ~/.mozilla/firefox directory at the resolution you were having problems with.

I disabled beryl and it made no difference. I tried moving the directory and it also made no difference. I had this problem with other browsers also.

I'm a total newbe to Linux......so where do I find and how do I change to the opensource driver?

[linuxphile]

The restricted drivers manager can be accessed at Administration->Restricted Drivers Manager.

Since you don't know where this I'm guessing you didn't use this to install the nvidia drivers? If that's the case you might have to toggle the setting on, exit the manager, and go back in and toggle it off.

[MowermanEd]

Ahhh yes, I remember now. Somehow, using my "poke and hope" method of learning I did use the restricted drivers manager to load the nVidia drivers. Let me boot into Ubuntu and give that a try. Back in a few.....

[MowermanEd]

Now another problem! After removing the nVidia drivers I was given no choice of any other driver to install. So I closed out the restricted drivers manager and rebooted. After logging in I was greeted with my mouse curser in the middle of an all white screen!!! All I could do was move the mouse around and nothing else. No keyboard response at all so I did a hard shutdown. Now what?

[linuxphile]

Your resolution/sync modes are likely off. Try the following to reconfigure X:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg

[MowermanEd]

Sorry, but that didn't work either. I think I'm just going to reload Vista's MBR and blow away the Linux partitions and start over from scratch. Thanks so much to all who've tried to help me. Hopefully, I've learned from this.