Please make sure that it is not a combination of an incompatible addon can you confirm that this still happens after starting Firefox in Safe Mode?

• Diagnose Firefox issues using Troubleshoot Mode

Second, check hardware acceleration and that your drivers are up to date. Upgrade your graphics drivers to use hardware acceleration and WebGL

Are you still seeing a black screen?

Directions for staring firefox in safe mode seem to be outdated. I can click the menu button (three dashes) but there is no question mark option

All of my drivers are up to date.

It might just be easier to migrate to Edge (sigh--I really do prefer firefox)

The ? usually is at the very bottom of the menu between Customize and the "power" icon to exit Firefox.

Alternately, you can tap the Alt key or F10 key to activate the classic menu bar and use the Help menu there.

I think one cause of a missing player on Netflix is disabling autoplay. Could you check that setting?

(1) In a new tab, type or paste about:config in the address bar and press Enter/Return. Click the button accepting the risk.

(2) In the search box above the list, type or paste autop and pause while the list is filtered

(3) If the media.autoplay.enabled preference is bolded and "modified" or "user set" to false, double-click it to restore the default value of true

When you reload Netflix, does the player display?

Try to toggle DRM off/on to see if it has effect when Firefox (re)load DRM components.

• Options/Preferences -> General: Play DRM
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/enable-drm

Play DRM was already listed as checked. When I uncheck it and try to play Netflix I get a new error message "oops something went wrong". When I check it back again and try to play Netflix I get the same seemingly fine everything at the beginning and then just a black screen when I try to play something.

Thanks for telling me where the "?" is--you are correct and I can now find it. Unfortunately it seems to make no difference if I restart firefox in safe mode. I have the same problem--netflix loads fine and everything seems to be OK until I try to run something and then I just get a black screen. I haven't tried your autoplay analysis suggestion since it seems relatively complex-- and i continue to be able to play HBO GO fine, so if there is an autoplay issue it must be specific to netlfix?

ebullitt said

Directions for staring firefox in safe mode seem to be outdated. I can click the menu button (three dashes) but there is no question mark option All of my drivers are up to date. It might just be easier to migrate to Edge (sigh--I really do prefer firefox)

What driver version, can you please share the specific details from about:support in your Firefox installation, I think it might be we are enabling hardware acceleration for an incompatible driver, before I file a bug, please post that information in a response to confirm.

Windows tells me all my drivers are up to date.

Are you asking about my firefox version? It is 56.02 (64-bit) and firefox is checked to automatically install updates.

I do apologize and the question mark was there in the firefox menu--just a little hard to find. When I start in safe mode nothing seems to change--I can run HBO but not netflix.

Something eventually did change a little--on netflix I no longer get a black screen but now a color image, but still no controls and no loading of the movie.

It is strange that HBO-go still runs fine but not Netflix. Seems something specific to netflix but I can't figure out what.

is this the info that you wanted?

Thank you for your help.

Any messages in the Web Console?

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en/Tools/Web_Console

No message to me in the web console. Firefox has since updated automatically and I love the new dark blue top line, although I miss the ability to reload a page with a click (maybe I miss the reload button location or id?). My problem remains the same. Absolutely everything works great under Netflix (news, financial stuff, email, multiple links, utube, hbo-go but Netflix still will not run.

My thanks for your help

Actually I found an answer and it is not that you have a software bug or driver incompatibility.

I have additionally been getting weird "emergency firefox update" screens in full screen that tell me something like "please click here to perform the emergency firefox update" --of course I will not do that. More lately, I have received weird messages on firefox that say something like "You have a zeus virus; do not close this window and do not restart your computer or your files will be forever compromised but call us instead" so of course I restarted the computer when the firefox window would not close. Edge did not seem to be affected when I rebooted although firefox continued to be frozen and stuck with the zeus warning even after reboot.

I have a fine antiviral system that is up to date and tells me nothing is wrong and that I have no viruses when I scan the computer.

When I searched the web (using edge) it seems that some kinds of adware can add odd things searching for scams. I found a helpful website that tells how to get out of the zeus virus scam under various systems and browsers. For firefox under windows 10 it is Menu-Help-Troubleshooting_Information-Refresh. I had previously tried "Restart with add ons disabled", but this did not help. However, "refresh" does work.

I lost my bookmarks after doing this but hey, I could find them again. Firefox now works fine with netflix and everything else and all the weird warning messages seem to be gone. I am so glad to have firefox back again!

Hi ebullitt, I hope that fix holds.

As you may know by now, the Refresh feature moved your old settings folder to your desktop inside a folder named Old Firefox Data. If you still have that, you could extract your extensions data to see what the name of the bad add-on was, and Mozilla might be able to block it in the future.

The relevant data file is named extensions.json, which is a hard-to-read collection of details about your installed extensions. If you open it in a tab in Firefox, it usually will appear in a tab with an expandable viewer. Click "Raw Data" and then below that "Pretty Print" to view it in a textual display that is more readable.

Scan down a bit to the first instance of defaultLocale, and the name of that extension should be listed just below it. Double-click defaultLocale to select it, then press Ctrl+f to populate it into the Find bar. Then you can quickly jump from one extension to the next and try to spot anything you don't remember installing yourself as a potential suspect.

If you glance up from the Find result, some of the mystery extensions will have @mozilla.org in their IDs, and "location": "app-system-defaults", indicating they are "system" extensions that Firefox installed itself. Those should be clean.

When you're done with this tab, you can close it without saving the pretty version.

Win8.1 FF 57

Same problem with twists...

While "black screen" on play was the only result when logged in as Win8.1 non-admin user, Netflix's only suggestion was to "run as administrator" or use another browser.

Content played as administrator, but noticed the

media.autoplay.enabled

Suggestion above. That was set to "false" and when toggled, content played.

Now the question, do I need to reset that every time I play netflix as the web is essentially unusable nowadays with autoplay enabled?

I have the "addon" Disable HTML5 Autoplay installed, but running in "safe mode" did not allow content to play.

Thanks in advance, Beverly Howard

Hi Beverly, either you need to allow autoplay for Netflix, **OR** a user in another thread said if you move your mouse around over the black rectangle you will at some point get a pointer or other indication of an invisible play button and click that. I don't know where that button is.

>> I don't know where that button is. <<

That kinda describes the situation <grin>

When I get some rest, I will poke around in the black rectangle (triangle???) and report back.

Until now, "media.autoplay.enabled" to true seems to work, pita that it is.

Thanks again, Beverly

OK, found it...

First, the screen is not always black... during my test just now, it was white.

Since Netflix requires clicking exactly on the play/pause button... which is pretty small, you need to run the cursor down to the lower right and around where the left end of the play bar should be until you get the "click finger"

But, don't click yet... move the finger to the left until it reverts to the pointer and then back until you barely get the finger again... (note that it's not me making up these puns ;-) and then click.

During my first poking around, I managed to mute the audio and it took a few seconds to see that things were not totally screwed.

<clicking> won't necessarily start the video, but, it will unblank the screen so you can click the play/pause button and get the video started.

Thanks again for the response, Beverly

fwiw, I am pretty sure that this problem (black screen) is related to the sequence that the netflix page is located... i.e. the "play bar" is loaded, and then the black screen is loaded, hiding the play bar behind the black.

I attempted to get the resolution and fix information contained in this thread to netflix with typical "user wall" results... I wanted to send the url to this thread, but netflix communications are set to "refuse any non netflix.com url" and netflix does not have any discoverable email addresses.

So... netflix users who have their browsers set to turn off autoplay are condemned to stumble around in the darkness for the foreseeable future.

<sigh>

Beverly Howard

Hi Beverly, have you considered submitting a request to Netflix to make its player compatible with autoplay being disabled?

I have not only considered it I have attempted to do so, but, as far as I can determine, there is no way to communicate with netflix other than chat or phone and those have restrictions that prevent anything other than questions to be communicated.

I specifically asked for a netflix email address to send the tech details to netflix and was told there was no email address available nor could I submit my email address to them to begin an email dialogue.

If you have an address, I will submit what I have learned.

Thanks for your interest. Obviously, if this can be addressed it will help thousands if not millions of netflix users.

Beverly Howard