Thunderbird IMAP mail no longer working after failed update from 68 to 78
I have an own IMAP mail server, sitting under my desk, with multiple mailboxes, and have several of these boxes set up in Thunderbird. I set it to IMAP because I wanted to be able to access the same boxes from different machines, thought really I only ever access most of them from one machine, running Windows 10 Pro 64bit, and accessing one mailbox (well, now two) from an Android tablet.
But lately the server HAS been being a bit of a pain, where sometimes it stops responding to email programs, and stops collecting the mails being brought through my webspace provider, until I reboot it. It also has an annoying tendency to randomly generate a new web-certificate each time I restart the machine.
Late last week, Thunderbird (version 68.10.0) kept crashing to desktop at least once an hour, all day, for two days. It was also, shortly after launch, prompting me to compress my mail, but it didn't appear to get all the way through the process of that before it crashed again. At some point, after one of these compress attempts, in one particular mailbox, it looked like it had decided to repopulate the box with the mail again from the oldest forward, and got as far as 2009 before crashing to desktop again. It looked like it was getting a little farther along with that, on subsequent sessions, but it still kept crashing to desktop before getting very far.
I finally got exasperated with all this, and decided to go grab a fresh copy of Thunderbird, in case either mine got corrupted, or somehow the auto-update hadn't happened right. I then saw that there was a new version called 78, with the blog saying how great it was over the previous one, but also stating that it was probably best to wait until your installed version of Thunderbird updated itself to it.
Problem is, with the frustratingly frequent crashes, I figured moving to 78 was preferable to waiting days to weeks for them to update me to it. (I only later saw a stickied post over on MozillaZine strongly advising to avoid moving to 78.) Anyway, after installing and launching 78, I got no more crashes, but after awhile I realized it wasn't getting any new mails, and in that one box, it was still stuck at 2009 being the newest repopulated mails.
Anyway, after wrestling with this trouble for awhile, I decided I needed to go back to 68, so went and found an installer for it linked in one of the help pages (since 68 is apparently no longer provided from the main Thunderbird page) and reinstalled that over 78, launched 68, and it stating "A newer version of Thunderbird may have made changes to your profile which are no longer compatible with this older version. Use this profile only with that newer version, or create a new profile for this installation of Thunderbird. Creating a new profile requires setting up your accounts, calendars and add-ons again." (I don't have any calendars or add-ons added.)
I aborted out of the create-new-profile thing, exited out of 68, then tried installing 69.0b4, got the same message there, quit out of that, reinstalled 78 again... and it no longer had my account settings or my mailboxes, or my old window positioning. After some tinkering around, I managed to get the mailbox info re-implanted back into ...\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles, and the maiboxes all showed back up again, and the window was positioned and sized back where it had been before I started all this, but Thunderbird was not acquiring ANY new mails off the IMAP server. It looked like it got no farther than querying the server, and then giving up.
I shut down for the night, came back the next day, launched Thunderbird... and discovered all the mailboxes were now showing an empty, white pane with no messages listed at all. Just each mailbox address on the left, with just the Inbox symbol under each, and NOTHING else showing.
Anyway, I've since tried installing 68 again, which gave the same "A newer version of Thunderbird..." message, and then poked around in the menus, trying to see if I could come at this matter from a different direction, but this isn't getting me anywhere.
I don't really care if I need to have it re-import all umpteen bazillian gigs of mails again from the IMAP server (though it would be better if I didn't have to), but I'd really like to get back to a working Thunderbird SOON, with all my particular mailboxes back in place in it, and the right server settings and the right window-placement settings again, without having to set all that stuff by hand from scratch again. There HAS to be a way to get the settings back in (mailbox login credentials, etc), from one of the files in the previous profile folder, or do some other thing to get all the settings in place, and get back up and running, sooner rather than later.
I am at a loss here. What do I do next?
All Replies (14)
Sounds like you need to troubleshoot your IMAP server first.
Well, the IMAP server's sometimes misbehaving isn't helping the situation, but even when it WAS responding (to the tablet at least), Thunderbird was having issues.
That said. one of the quirks I've had when dealing with the server is that, when the server was rebooted, and I then fired up Thunderbird again, Thunderbird would pop up a dialog box complaining that the certification had changed.... for each new email it tried to read, and asking if I wanted it to accept the new certificate. I have NOT noticed any such dialog box appearing when trying this in Thunderbird 78. I wonder if 78 changed that behavior to just quietly rejecting the changed certificate in the background and NOT asking me first. 0o
You can download and install Tbird 68 from here https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/68.10.0/
I strongly suggest a clean reinstallation. This involves deleting Tbird's program files and then installing it afresh. To do a clean reinstallation of Thunderbird, proceed as follows:
- Open https://archive.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/68.10.0/ in a browser and download the Thunderbird 68 setup package to your computer. Save it somewhere convenient, like the Downloads folder.
- Quit/Exit all open windows of Thunderbird via the File menu on the menu bar, or the hamburger menu icon (three horizontal lines stacked together)
- Uninstall ALL versions of Thunderbird via Control Panel. Reboot if prompted to do so.
- Delete the Mozilla Thunderbird folder from the following locations:
- C:\Program Files (x86)
- C:\Program Files
- Right-click the downloaded Thunderbird Setup package and Run as Administrator to start the installation.
Warning: Do not use third-party uninstaller programs to uninstall Thunderbird. They can permanently delete your profile folder resulting in loss of your precious emails, addresses and other data!
So, just to be sure..... I uninstall it via Windows Apps & Features?
I'm pretty sure I said Control Panel, which is still present in Windows 10, but I guess the Settings app will do too. As long as it's a native Windows programs/apps manager and not a third-party tool.
Okay, uninstalled it as described above, performed the install, in Admin Mode.
At launch, Thunderbird is still complaining about "A newer version... may have made changes to your profile..."
So what do I do next, to get back all my settings and mails?
edit to add: Okay, I see something over here about how 78 "...changes the formats of address books," but I'm not completely sure what "an address book" even is. Is that the list of other people's email addresses I've stored in case I want to send email to someone, or is that the contents of my local mailboxes?
edit2: Yeah, according to a quick web-search, its the document storing the saved other-people's-email-addresses in case I want to contact them again or something. No great loss if that's gone, since I rarely used that saved-out list anyway. :)
Modified by Nomad of Norad
Lets back way way back to the beginning. If Thunderbird crashes, it offer to send a crash report. how about some crash ids so we can see why it is crashing in the first place.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozilla-crash-reporter-tb#w_viewing-crash-reports
Then have a read of https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/unable-launch-older-version-profile and https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/dedicated-profile-thunderbird-installation
That should bring you up to speed on what you are trying to do. But I think the answer will be use 78, because the failure to connect to the server is probably self signed certificates, very popular in the Linux world and not really supported anymore. iF you allow non SSL/TLS connection it will probably just work. Or you might disable the query ocsp servers in options. That always fails for self signed certs. (Used to be in advanced > Certificate. But I am not sure where it has gone in 78. Options has been re arranged and I am so far unable to successfully upgrade. I can install and create a new profile, just not upgrade my existing profile.
Okay, several crash IDs from 16th
Crash ID: bp-2d3ab758-b20b-4bc8-8afd-5e3310200716 Crash ID: bp-23819b30-3cc9-401a-94df-931ed0200716 Crash ID: bp-38e476b0-4fde-4238-b362-ed5ba0200717 Crash ID: bp-25917dae-ca79-4636-9438-c29460200717 Crash ID: bp-9cd2cb20-fa6d-4377-9181-6f8190200717
...and the 17th
Crash ID: bp-7ed7606c-a236-41bc-8b3f-753b50200717 Crash ID: bp-1d348462-21e5-4411-8c08-7bb260200717 Crash ID: bp-d4475c3c-4c12-472e-9bcf-5ab650200717
Okay, tried to send a message on this, and the system here seems to have eaten it.
Crashlog IDs from the 16th
Crash ID: bp-2d3ab758-b20b-4bc8-8afd-5e3310200716 Crash ID: bp-23819b30-3cc9-401a-94df-931ed0200716 Crash ID: bp-38e476b0-4fde-4238-b362-ed5ba0200717 Crash ID: bp-25917dae-ca79-4636-9438-c29460200717 Crash ID: bp-9cd2cb20-fa6d-4377-9181-6f8190200717
Crashlog IDs from the 17th
Crash ID: bp-7ed7606c-a236-41bc-8b3f-753b50200717 Crash ID: bp-1d348462-21e5-4411-8c08-7bb260200717 Crash ID: bp-d4475c3c-4c12-472e-9bcf-5ab650200717
Not sure why the first attempted post of these simply vanished when I hit Post Reply. 0o
Okay, I've been trying to post the crashlog ID strings, but the message never makes it to this thread, it simply vanishes,
edit: Okay, lets see if it will let just ONE through. Crash ID: bp-2d3ab758-b20b-4bc8-8afd-5e3310200716
edit2: Oh, NOW all the other post-attempts show up! :D
Modified by Nomad of Norad
I see you have Avast Antivirus installed. The anti-ransomware protection module is now a free feature and this, together with overall protection, can cause grief to Thunderbird's normal operation. I suggest you reboot Windows into safe mode with networking and run Thunderbird. Wifi may not work in that mode, but ethernet will. Run for as long as it takes to get a new crash, submit and post the most recent ID.
There is mention in https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1649023 of manually managing the page file size. Are you doing this?
Page file size? I have no recollection of having set any such thing. Should I have something like that enabled? And if so, where would I check this?
On a different note, I'd had the 32bit version of Thunderbird before. When I reinstalled 68 this time, I used the 64bit version. I had this theory that maybe I'd just hit a certain very high number of emails received such that it exceeded the number of them that a 32bit edition of the program could handle, but that going to the 64bit version might fix it. Pure conjecture on my part, but I guess going 64bit maybe removes one more potential issue out of the equation.
Anyway, I've got most of my mailboxes added back in (rather than loading back in a copy of the old Profiles stuff), and it's been repopulating all the mails from them. So far it hasn't crashed yet, but it also hasn't re-acquired all the mails yet, either.
I guess I'll know within a day or so if the problem has been solved, or if the crashes come back.
edit: Oh, hang on a minute, you mean Microsoft Windows' page file settings, I was reading that as there being some way to set the size of some sort of file-transfers "page" somewhere in Thunderbird or something. If I've configured Windows to some nonstandard swap-file settings, it would have been done a long time ago.
Modified by Nomad of Norad
Well, far as I can tell, Thunderbird has finally re-retrieved all of my emails from the IMAP server, as of this afternoon, and I haven't seen hide nor hair of the hourly crash showing back up. I think I'm probably golden, but I'll keep an eye on it for the next few days to be sure.