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Installer does not work on XP. "thunderbird.exe is not a valid win32 application." SOLVED Thunderbird 60.3.0 incorrectly installed on XP, which is unsupported

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  • Last reply by James

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This morning the update of Thunderbird appears to have failed. I didn't get a message saying so, but I thought it odd that Thunderbird did not restart.

I tried to start Thunderbird myself and I got a message saying "thunderbird.exe is not a valid win32 application."

I'm running XP.

I backed up my emails then tried installing the latest version, 60.3.0, and using Taskmanager I can see it starts, briefly uses about 45,000k, then cpu usage drops to 0% and memory usage to 2,904k. After that nothing happens.

Is the problem that XP is no longer supported?

Mike

This morning the update of Thunderbird appears to have failed. I didn't get a message saying so, but I thought it odd that Thunderbird did not restart. I tried to start Thunderbird myself and I got a message saying "thunderbird.exe is not a valid win32 application." I'm running XP. I backed up my emails then tried installing the latest version, 60.3.0, and using Taskmanager I can see it starts, briefly uses about 45,000k, then cpu usage drops to 0% and memory usage to 2,904k. After that nothing happens. Is the problem that XP is no longer supported? Mike

Modified by Wayne Mery

Chosen solution

The problem is two fold. XP is no longer supported and a bug in the update process offered updates to a number of people it should not have. My understanding is that error was fixed after a couple of hours. When it was first noticed.

XP support ending article here https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-end-support-xp-and-vista

link to how to get last version supported https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/get-latest-version-thunderbird-windows-xp-vista

You can also use the download link to choose V52.9 if you are sure you had it. V38 is the last version to have support for XP without SP3 so is offered as the "safe" option. The updater will take care of further updates to the latest XP version supported.

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Chosen Solution

The problem is two fold. XP is no longer supported and a bug in the update process offered updates to a number of people it should not have. My understanding is that error was fixed after a couple of hours. When it was first noticed.

XP support ending article here https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-end-support-xp-and-vista

link to how to get last version supported https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/get-latest-version-thunderbird-windows-xp-vista

You can also use the download link to choose V52.9 if you are sure you had it. V38 is the last version to have support for XP without SP3 so is offered as the "safe" option. The updater will take care of further updates to the latest XP version supported.

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Thanks. All is good now.

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Yes the Thunderbird 52.9.0 requires WinXP SP3 for setup to run while the Firefox 52.9.0 esr setup requires SP2 at minimum to run.