Thunderbird Not Responding.

[tjcramer]

Thanks @DanRaisch and @wsm. I've switched off the sync and will see what happens. In the first 10 minutes, it appears to address the delays. However, the ramification will be that I won't have the messages offline, correct? That's a tradeoff I'd make, and could sync prior to long trips.

[Jay574]

I was having this same issue and it was largely resolved by following the advice to turn off "Keep messages for this account on this computer". So thank you for that.

A couple factors for me: I have my own web server, and I have two separate mail accounts on it. One I just POP and it's never been a problem, but the IMAP one has been a nightmare of frozen GUIs. I have about a hundred emails in that inbox - any more and I move them to another IMAP folder archive where another hundred or so reside - and then after that I archive them to disk and they're removed entirely from the web server. I don't have any folders with 10,000 emails or crap like that.

At home I have Windows Live Mail, and I notice it does things in "background". If you hit delete it removes the email from your display immediately, but in the background it's waiting on the IMAP process to complete. Often it does not and it returns a "Your Server Sucks" error and those emails reappear. But what it does NOT do is retry endlessly and hang the GUI until success.

I am on Win8, 64 bit, quad core 8GB of memory, yada yada. Perhaps the POP hangs the GUI also, but more briefly because of the brevity of the negotiations necessary with the server.

Full disclosure I'm running Start8 from Stardock software which runs as a service to modify my Win GUI.

[DanRaisch]

OK, Jay574. Not sure if there was a support question in there but thanks for the report.

[julm]

I've had the same problem for several months, and it's been getting worse over the past few weeks. It recently got so bad that TB would not only stop responding, but actually crash as well. It now stops responding every 5 minutes or so, and the odd time, it hangs for extended periods.

I've tried almost everything. I cleared out my IMAP inboxes. I disabled add-ons. Messages are not stored on computer, and I even disabled automatic checking of emails. I re-installed TB, and I also created a new profile for testing, and I see the same problem there.

I've used TB for many years, and have always loved it, but this issue is costing me a lot of time, so I'm desperately looking for a solution.

[wsmwk]

I've had the same problem for several months, and it's been getting worse over the past few weeks. It recently got so bad that TB would not only stop responding, but actually crash as well. It now stops responding every 5 minutes or so, and the odd time, it hangs for extended periods.

I've tried almost everything. I cleared out my IMAP inboxes. I disabled add-ons. Messages are not stored on computer, and I even disabled automatic checking of emails. I re-installed TB, and I also created a new profile for testing, and I see the same problem there.

I've used TB for many years, and have always loved it, but this issue is costing me a lot of time, so I'm desperately looking for a solution.

You've done a ton of work, but you haven't stated that you have done the easiest:

1. Does problem go away with thunderbird in safe mode
- http://support.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/kb/safe-mode ?

2. Does problem go away in *Windows'* safe mode with networking enabled?g-safe-mode
- win7 http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/wind ... lsafe.mspx

let us know please

[julm]

I haven't tried Windows Safe Mode. I have tried TB in safe mode, though, without success (i.e. same problem).

Windows Safe Mode will be a bit more difficult because I'll be kind of limited, so I won't be able to get on with my usual work, but I can give it a try anyway.

Thanks!

PS: I read over my last post, and just wanted to clarify about what I meant by "clearing out my IMAP inboxes" - I basically archived a lot of emails, but I still have a few thousand in most of them. I've got 10 accounts, but only check 9 of them every few days.

[bigredapple]

My TB was locking up so bad I couldn't even get anywhere with any of the above suggestions. I was able to compact - but that didn't help. Finally I uninstalled McAfee and installed Avast Anti-Virus - Eureka! Problem solved!

[sveingold]

Bigredapple's solution worked well for me, this might be the best (only) solution to the issue. The question remains whether TB should be designed to be more tolerant of McAfee or the other way round... I've filed a ticket with McAfee, if anything comes back I'll post here.

[DanRaisch]

It's up to the anti-virus makers to ensure compatibility with all major browsers, not the other way around.

Locking this due to the age of the original posts.