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thunderbird freezes at startup (win10)

  • 8 replies
  • 30 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by ylpo

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This morning TB (version 45.2.0, four pop accounts) worked fine, but this afternoon TB freezes right after starting TB and I can't have any interaction with the program. I can't get TB working again. I have never experienced this before. Between this morning and this afternoon, I have not made changes to the laptop (Asus). Firefox runs fine.

I have tried: - restarting TB several times - restarting the laptop (windows 10 64 bit version 1511) several times - restarting windows in safe mode - disable virus scanner F-Secure - run disk cleanup - wait for 5 minutes and more

In the task manager under details I have found the message (in analyze wait chain): one or more threads of thunderbird.exe are waiting to finish network i/o

Also TB uses a fair amount of CPU and memory (so apparently is doing something, and is not idle)

I regularly compact the folders.

I use TB for my work and can't access my mails, so I am very worried and help would be much appreciated.

This morning TB (version 45.2.0, four pop accounts) worked fine, but this afternoon TB freezes right after starting TB and I can't have any interaction with the program. I can't get TB working again. I have never experienced this before. Between this morning and this afternoon, I have not made changes to the laptop (Asus). Firefox runs fine. I have tried: - restarting TB several times - restarting the laptop (windows 10 64 bit version 1511) several times - restarting windows in safe mode - disable virus scanner F-Secure - run disk cleanup - wait for 5 minutes and more In the task manager under details I have found the message (in analyze wait chain): one or more threads of thunderbird.exe are waiting to finish network i/o Also TB uses a fair amount of CPU and memory (so apparently is doing something, and is not idle) I regularly compact the folders. I use TB for my work and can't access my mails, so I am very worried and help would be much appreciated.

Modified by Wayne Mery

All Replies (8)

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ylpo said

This morning TB (version 45.2.0, four pop accounts) worked fine, but this afternoon TB freezes right after starting TB and I can't have any interaction with the program. I can't get TB working again. I have never experienced this before. Between this morning and this afternoon, I have not made changes to the laptop (Asus). Firefox runs fine. I have tried: - restarting TB several times - restarting the laptop (windows 10 64 bit version 1511) several times - restarting windows in safe mode - disable virus scanner F-Secure - run disk cleanup - wait for 5 minutes and more In the task manager under details I have found the message (in analyze wait chain): one or more threads of thunderbird.exe are waiting to finish network i/o Also TB uses a fair amount of CPU and memory (so apparently is doing something, and is not idle) I regularly compact the folders. I use TB for my work and can't access my mails, so I am very worried and help would be much appreciated.
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Reinstalling the current version also did not help, but reinstalling an older version 38.5.1 did work (this one was still working on my old windows 7 machine). I can now use TB again and have disable updates. Reinstalling 45.0 did not work and has the same problems as 45.2.0. I did not try any other versions,

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ok, that was false hope, after a while this version also has exactly the same problem ;-(

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I tried to use TB on my old windows 7 machine by copying my profile to my old machine and it worked fine. But after Firefox updated, TB did not work on this machine as well. perhaps there is a connection?

I removed FF and TB and reinstalled the 38.5.1 version of TB (I did not reinstall FF), but it freezes after startup.

Now I am really stuck...

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Please start Thunderbird with "offline" option - see https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Command_Line_Options#-offline

Go to Tools | Account settings | Server Settings.

Change all accounts to not check for new mail at startup, and to not check on interval.

Then go online at File | offline |and uncheck work offline

Then check each account one at a time for new mail at File | Get new messages

Armed with knowing which account is causing the problem, see if one of the newer messages in that account is causing a problem. Please do so in a way that does not destroy a possble bad messages that we would want to keep and examine as a testcase. (you might move a set of messages to another folder)

Modified by Wayne Mery

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Thank you for your reaction!

Yesterday I installed a slightly older profile (4 hours difference, apparently the profile changed despite TB kept freezing during my actions to get TB working on my windows 10 laptop).

This slightly older profile was involved in the original problem of freezing in windows 10 with TB 45.2.0 though, but worked on the windows 7 machine with TB 38.5.1.

So I used the slightly older profile with TB 38.5.1 on windows 10 and it worked all afternoon and as I started TB this morning. I received new mail and read some. But then all of a sudden it froze again when selecting a few mails I wanted to delete. The first time TB froze was also whilst selecting some mails I wanted to delete. After that it kept on freezing right after starting TB.

I started TB with the offline option and I at least can access my mails, so thank you for that tip. I did what you said (unchecking and checking), but did not find any problems. So far it has been working. (TB 38.5.1.)

The problems seems to be very erratic and I am waiting for the next freeze.

I do get a lot more junk mail since this week. I do not read/open these mails and delete them right away, also from Trash. I don't know if that has something to do with it.

I checked with 2 virus scanners (F-secure and msert) for viruses on the laptop (deep scan, whole system), but none have been found

Do you recommend updating to TB 42.5.0 at this moment?

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> Do you recommend updating to TB 42.5.0 at this moment?

Sorry we've been out of touch.

How are things going? And did you stay with 38? Or did you update?

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Recently I have updated to 42.5.0 and up til now it is still working. Now there are strange things happening with the fonts when replying to an e-mail (that also happened the previous time I updated to 42.5.0). I get huge characters and things get messed up between paragraph and body text. But this is just very very annoying and does not prevent met from reading or writing e-mails.