Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Log files shows fiction not the real server email content

  • 4 cavab
  • 1 has this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by DarrylJS1

more options

Not downloading email. Sees 1 to170 then says no messages. Initiated a log file using NSPR. This shows that the real mail on the server is NOT being read. Message count wrong and always downloads one email which has been permanently deleted from the server. The log finishing with a semaphor failure. I have cleared the cache in Thunderbird and W10. Restarted and changed the log file name. The content of each logfile is newly written but with the same rubbish data! I can access the mail server using a webmail function so I know that the server end is OK.

This all started with 60.1.3. on the 26th November. Prior to that date all has been A-OK.

How is Thunderbird reading this non existent email and ficticious message count?

All input gratefully received.

Darryl Scott

Not downloading email. Sees 1 to170 then says no messages. Initiated a log file using NSPR. This shows that the real mail on the server is NOT being read. Message count wrong and always downloads one email which has been permanently deleted from the server. The log finishing with a semaphor failure. I have cleared the cache in Thunderbird and W10. Restarted and changed the log file name. The content of each logfile is newly written but with the same rubbish data! I can access the mail server using a webmail function so I know that the server end is OK. This all started with 60.1.3. on the 26th November. Prior to that date all has been A-OK. How is Thunderbird reading this non existent email and ficticious message count? All input gratefully received. Darryl Scott

Chosen solution

have you tried disabling your anti virus mail scanner? they are the usual cause of this sort of issue.

Sometime just rebooting the computer will do, but removing mail scanning is the next step. What anti virus do you use?

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (4)

more options

Seçilmiş Həll

have you tried disabling your anti virus mail scanner? they are the usual cause of this sort of issue.

Sometime just rebooting the computer will do, but removing mail scanning is the next step. What anti virus do you use?

more options

Thanks for the response Matt. Yes did all of that, a number of times. Where is Tbird finding the information it puts onto the log files? Same rubbish each time and not from my ISP. Cleared Tbird cache, closed Tbird, cleared W10 cache, Reboot This sequence repeated twice with no effect. Also re-installed on top of existing application.

For Tbird to be writing that data in to the log file it must be storing it somewhere. If I knew where I could delete the file or over write it with a cleaned copy.

more options

I re disabled my Avast this morning. This time it has downloaded the emails plus the phantom email. Re enabled Avast operations , squirted test mail, which was received correctly. I will not be back here for 48 hours or so. That will be the real test. If all OK I will close this question. Thank you for reading.

more options

OK 36hrs later. All good. Been thinking what has changed since I last disabled AVAST. The main change may be the update to 6.3.2. Of course other updates etc could have change the environment.

After over half a century in the business I know that there are very few definitives in complex environments.

Thank you to Matt for responding and all who read it.