Consistent App Crash after recent nightly update that destroyed the whole thunderbird installation
Here is the consistent app crash message I get from windows. Eventually I reinstalled everything and re-built my installation on a USB stick. What happened? Problem signature:
Problem Event Name: APPCRASH Application Name: thunderbird.exe Application Version: 78.0.0.7453 Application Timestamp: 5ecfac86 Fault Module Name: xul.dll Fault Module Version: 78.0.0.7453 Fault Module Timestamp: 5ecfaf8e Exception Code: 80000003 Exception Offset: 00000000002f1813 OS Version: 6.1.7601.2.1.0.256.1 Locale ID: 2057 Additional Information 1: b003 Additional Information 2: b003e6fdbe082f4b32b49a32821c1c81 Additional Information 3: 4a02 Additional Information 4: 4a02a20311d0bfe20bcd60289297124a
How could this be fixed? Replacing xul.dll.?? This upgrade was a big hassle as it took me several days to work through all of this. So why? Did this happen ton others.
One last thing, this portable installation still writes a profiles ini on the local computer used at the standard location "C:\Users\mdw\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\profiles.ini". Can this be changed to write on the USB to make it truly portable?
All Replies (6)
The signature doesn't reveal much, but a crash report URL in Help/Troubleshooting, Crash Reports, might. Crashes are to be expected with Daily TB. Also, the latest versions of TB and Firefox use a new profile policy, and I don't think you can avoid having the portable profile entered in profiles.ini on the local computer.
If you were on the most recent version of daily, you would be at 79. This suggests to me that you are stuck at the 78 daily that crashes on startup.
You should download from https://www.thunderbird.net/#channel to get out of this predicament.
So what would be a simple work around this latest TB ini policy. Can we modify this or override it, what purpose does it serve anyway. In nearly two weeks of experimenting and working on this I noticed that users who are being asked to create a new profile should do it, but name it the same like the old one, or give it a recognizable name rather than the automatic alphanumeric names TB creates, but the use the browse option to point to the location of the old profile. TB has to be started with the profile manager option i.e. thunderbird.exe -p to do this. Copied profiles must not be read-only and folders and files have to be adjusted by right-clicking and turning off read-only Right now everything can be moved to USB except these two ini files. TB automatically writes them and for each re-connecting to an old profile gives it a different ID. Drive letters must be correct for the path value in the ini files. Somewhere in the source code or associated files there is a setting to turn this off or make it accept a profiles.ini, installs,ini in a different locatin than %appdata%
This topic is about your crash, so I think you should have posted your last comment in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1290961
But more importantly,
1. You seem to think 78/89 aka nightly is the latest version. It is not the latest supported version - those versions are development builds that you shouldn't be using on a daily basis. If you want support in this forum you should be be using a release build from the free download button at https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/
2. I will repeat you shouldn't be hacking around profile files. If your problem is that THunderbird is complaining about your profile, then you want to use --allow-downgrade on the command line, together with -p to get back to an "older" version of Thunderbird using the same profile.
Last item ... I know you are trying to be helpful and so I say this kindly ....
I highly recommend posting screen shots and exact text of what you are seeing, rather than your interpretations of what you are seeing, attempted workarounds and complaints about why and how you think things should be working - we can then get to the meat of your original issue more quickly. Also, shorter paragraphs with one small idea per paragraph would be helpful.
Thanks Wayne. Good stuff, yes of course, screenshots help. I did study how Thunderbird does things when it runs into a profile mounting issue. Unfortunately the very nice articles on MozillaZine do not clarify many of the questions that come up when you try to get to the bottom of the problem. So I will raise such questions elsewhere. Any recent documentation about the automatic workings of recent Thunderbird releases that you would recommend?