Mozilla VPN is currently experiencing an outage. Our team is actively working to resolve the issue. Please check the status page for real-time updates. Thank you for your patience.

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

TB update fails and I get a 7-Zip Access Denied error when downloading a new version.

  • 3 replies
  • 6 have this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by Matt

more options

Thunderbird has not been able to update since version 24.6.0 (in Windows 7). Every time I try to auto update, it tells me that the update fails. When I allow the updater to download a full version, that also fails. When I manually try to download a new version, during the extraction process I get an error message that reads "7-Zip" at the top and "Access Denied" in the window. I followed all the suggestions from the downloading error support page (running as administrator, stopping Thunderbird processes, etc.) and none of them solved the problem. Any other ideas?

Thunderbird has not been able to update since version 24.6.0 (in Windows 7). Every time I try to auto update, it tells me that the update fails. When I allow the updater to download a full version, that also fails. When I manually try to download a new version, during the extraction process I get an error message that reads "7-Zip" at the top and "Access Denied" in the window. I followed all the suggestions from the downloading error support page (running as administrator, stopping Thunderbird processes, etc.) and none of them solved the problem. Any other ideas?

Chosen solution

what firewall/Anti virus software are you using. My guess is that either the firewall or anti virus software is blocking both the update and the full install because they contains ZIP files. I have not heard of this outside the paranoid corporate / Enterprise settings in the past, but there is always a first time.

Read this answer in context 👍 0

All Replies (3)

more options

Chosen Solution

what firewall/Anti virus software are you using. My guess is that either the firewall or anti virus software is blocking both the update and the full install because they contains ZIP files. I have not heard of this outside the paranoid corporate / Enterprise settings in the past, but there is always a first time.

more options

That was it. I am running McAfee VirusScan Enterprise + AntiSpyware Enterprise 8.8. Once I disabled all the functions, I was able to install the auto update. Odd, since it has never blocked updates before and this is my home computer so isn't subject to the controls of my office computer. Must be a new restriction in the McAfee updates.

more options

McAfee and Thunderbird have been a nightmare together since they introduced their new heuristics engine two years ago. almost every release has had some Thunderbird crippling feature.

I have updated our wiki page of anti virus performance issues, https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing:Antivirus_Related_Performance_Issues#McAfee