Black window bugs and lockups and crashes and WHAT'S WRONG?

Question

First, I thought the problem was that my employer still uses Windows XP, with layers of custom security on top. But it happens at home, on my vanilla XP netbook.
So then I thought the problem was XP, which is, after all, obsolete. But now it is happening on my brand-new week-old laptop running 64 bit Windows 7 professional.
These are the problems:
(1) When recovering from sleep mode, or when I plug in a second screen, or even just from having the screen closed briefly, Firefox fails to redraw its window contents. I just get a black, empty window until I resize it or force a refresh. NO OTHER PROGRAM I USE HAS THIS PROBLEM.
(2) Sometime Firefox fails to redraw no matter what I do. I just had a totally black window, and when I clicked on the close box, a msgbox popped up, totally black inside, with a title like, "Are you sure you want to close?" I couldn't even see the "yes" and "No" buttons, and clicking where they usually are didn't work. I finally got it to close by hitting the enter key.
(3) Sometimes these problems are accompanied by a little vestigial micro-window, which has no contents, no close button, and no resize control. It's this nothing window with no title, but the title bar is long enough for maybe 20 characters. The most recent time this happened to me, the nothing window had a blinking text cursor inside, but typing had no effect. The only way to get rid of the micro-window is to close every single instance of Firefox, and then wait about 20 seconds. Then it disappears on its own. Sometimes it appears on its own without the black screen problem.
(4) All my favicons disappeared when I updated Firefox on my XP work computer, and they refuse to come back, even when I revisit the websites.
The computers involved are:
Dell E4200 running Win XP Pro
Acer One netbook running Win XP Home
Vostro 3350 running Win 7 Pro
All 3 computers are running Norton Security Suite (The E4200 is running an Enterprise custom load, the other two are running Comcast's free version)
And all 3 computers have been connected to a Displaylink USB video adapter (for a 3rd screen) at some point or another, meaning that the driver is loaded on all the computers, but the above problems occur without any external monitor at all connected.
Everything else is pretty vanilla.
I'm getting these issues every other day or so, and it is really starting to annoy me and make me worried that Firefox is unstable, with makes me worried that any unsaved work or even my hard drive data might be at risk.

Answer 1

Try to disable hardware acceleration.
*Tools > Options > Advanced > General > Browsing: "Use hardware acceleration when available"
If disabling hardware acceleration works then check if there is an update available for your graphics display driver.
*https://support.mozilla.org/kb/how-do-i-upgrade-my-graphics-drivers