TBird Locks up Often

i_am_jim · Post by **i_am_jim** » May 22nd, 2016, 12:20 pm

By locking up I mean the whirling circle ( the new windows hourglass ) appears and doesn't allow ANY action in TBird for a few minutes.

I've posted about this problem here before, and found no solution. But, it has gotten progressively worse. It now happens again and again while trying to draft a single message. Even one sentence messages. I know more about it now. If I wait about 3-4 minutes it will unlock. but after typing maybe one character it will lock again. Another manifestation is when I send a message it with show the sent successfully status box and then lock up.

I went to TBird because Eudora, which I had used since the mid 90s, no longer supports some of the newer features and I figured it would quit working entirely in some later version of Windows. Changing mail readers was very painful and took me at least a year to get my Eudora configuration set up. Now, if I can't fix this problem I fear I'm going to have to move again, this time to Outlook. I despise Outlook for two reasons. It's totally anti-intuitive and the only reason it's ubiquitous is because Gate's has used his monopoly to drive Eudora and other mail readers off the scene just like he did the best word processor ever -- Word Perfect.

So, I'm back again trying to get TBird out of this godawful mess. I looked at some kind of error file and found these from today. I haven't the vaguest idea what they mean.

==========================================
Timestamp: 5/22/2016 1:29:12 PM
Warning: Unknown property 'grid-auto-columns'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: resource://gre-resources/ua.css
Line: 175, Column: 19
Source Code:
grid-auto-columns: inherit;

Timestamp: 5/22/2016 1:29:12 PM
Warning: Unknown property 'grid-auto-rows'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: resource://gre-resources/ua.css
Line: 176, Column: 16
Source Code:
grid-auto-rows: inherit;

Timestamp: 5/22/2016 1:29:12 PM
Warning: Unknown property 'grid-auto-flow'. Declaration dropped.
Source File: resource://gre-resources/ua.css
Line: 177, Column: 16
Source Code:
grid-auto-flow: inherit;

There were a total of 11 error messages like the ones above

Followed by the ones below

Timestamp: 5/22/2016 1:29:12 PM
Warning: Use of Mutation Events is deprecated. Use MutationObserver instead.
Source File: chrome://calendar/content/widgets/calendar-widgets.xml
Line: 495

Timestamp: 5/22/2016 1:29:14 PM
Error: TypeError: mainToolbar is null
Source File: chrome://attachmentextractor/content/attachmentextractor.js
Line: 616

Timestamp: 5/22/2016 1:29:15 PM
Error: TypeError: Cc['@mozilla.org/extensions/manager;1'] is undefined
Source File: chrome://attachmentextractor/content/attachmentextractor.js
Line: 426
======================================

The eleven Source File: resource://gre-resources/ua.css errors is about right for the number of lock ups I had while trying to compose two short emails.

Post by **DanRaisch** » May 22nd, 2016, 12:23 pm

Does the same thing occur if you launch the application in Mozilla Safe Mode? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode

If no improvement in Safe Mode, try reinstalling the program:

Clear the browser cache and the Windows Temp directory.
Shutdown any anti-virus software you are running.
Download a new copy of the full installer from http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/
Delete the directory C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird
Run the installer.
Restart the anti-virus program.

Note that your saved messages, address books, settings, passwords, etc (if any) are stored in a different directory from the program files and will not be removed by deleting the directory identified above.

This thread http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 5#p5239885 has a more detailed version of the above instructions if needed.

i_am_jim · Post by **i_am_jim** » May 22nd, 2016, 12:54 pm

I've done Safe Mode before, and I did it again -- no help.

Installed a new version before -- no help. But, I'll try it again

I can't remember if I disabled my antivirus. It's a real bear and the last time I did it I had to uninstall it to disable it.

i_am_jim · Post by **i_am_jim** » May 22nd, 2016, 1:57 pm

Okay, I downloaded the latest version, disabled the antivirus, deleted the Mozila Thunderbird folder in Program Files (x86) and reinstalled -- no help.

I'm fairly sure I did all this before in an attempt to solve this problem.

One thing I hadn't mentioned, I have two,I think they're called Profiles -- two completely separate users. When a program needs to go to TBird it asks which one I want to go to.

i_am_jim · Post by **i_am_jim** » May 22nd, 2016, 1:58 pm

Just to be clear, this never happens while reading incoming messages, it only happens when composing new messages.

Post by **tanstaafl** » May 22nd, 2016, 3:22 pm

I also have a problem with it frequently hanging (program becomes non-responsive, and windows asks do you want it to close the program or have it try to find a solution when you click on the window) when composing a message using either Thunderbird 45.1 or Earlybird (48.0a2) under Windows 10. Its a intermittent problem. Frequently it will occur within a minute, but other times it might occur several times within the same message and then not occur again while I edit the same message for 15 minutes.

Running in safe mode has no effect on this problem. I'm using Windows Firewall and BitDefender (which doesn't know how to scan or intercept email) as my anti-virus, hardware acceleration is disabled, and I have updated both windows and my video drivers. I'm using the generic keyboard and mouse drivers.

I've installed Thunderbird 17.0.8 (released August 6, 2013) in a different directory. It uses the same profile and so far it doesn't seem to have problems composing messages. Thunderbird supports logging for various network protocols, but doesn't have a generic log that can be used to help determine why it becomes non-responsive. Since the program doesn't actually crash (it just becomes non-responsive) it doesn't generate a crash report. The event logs are also useless as most errors are unrelated and can be ignored. For example I have

Timestamp: 5/22/2016 5:47:02 PM
Error: Error: osfile.jsm cannot be used from the main thread yet
Source File: resource:///modules/osfile.jsm
Line: 12
Timestamp: 5/22/2016 5:55:52 PM
Error: 2016-05-22 17:55:52 gloda.datastore ERROR got error in _asyncTrackerListener.handleError(): 19: constraint failed
Source File: resource:///modules/gloda/log4moz.js
Line: 687
Timestamp: 5/22/2016 6:00:06 PM
Error: 2016-05-22 18:00:06 gloda.datastore ERROR got error in _asyncTrackerListener.handleError(): 19: constraint failed
Source File: resource:///modules/gloda/log4moz.js
Line: 687

plus several dozen warnings while running 17.0.8. (which I haven't been able to duplicate the problem with yet). I'll give it a couple of days and if it is still working fine I'll try 38.8.0 next.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Go_back_to_an ... hunderbird
https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/releases/ (index of release notes)

i_am_jim · Post by **i_am_jim** » May 22nd, 2016, 5:37 pm

You have described my problem exactly

wsmwk · Post by **wsmwk** » May 22nd, 2016, 7:04 pm

i_am_jim wrote:Okay, I downloaded the latest version, disabled the antivirus, deleted the Mozila Thunderbird folder in Program Files (x86) and reinstalled -- no help.

I'm fairly sure I did all this before in an attempt to solve this problem.

One thing I hadn't mentioned, I have two,I think they're called Profiles -- two completely separate users. When a program needs to go to TBird it asks which one I want to go to.

Disabling AV frankly is not a definitive test. Windows safe mode is.

wsmwk · Post by **wsmwk** » May 22nd, 2016, 7:34 pm

tanstaafl wrote:I also have a problem with it frequently hanging (program becomes non-responsive, and windows asks do you want it to close the program or have it try to find a solution when you click on the window) when composing a message using either Thunderbird 45.1 or Earlybird (48.0a2) under Windows 10. ...

I've installed Thunderbird 17.0.8 (released August 6, 2013) in a different directory. It uses the same profile and so far it doesn't seem to have problems composing messages.

If 17 is OK and 24 is not, then you could be seeing https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=929281 which is listed in the list of performance regressions http://mzl.la/1U6PXBQ

tanstaafl wrote:Thunderbird supports logging for various network protocols, but doesn't have a generic log that can be used to help determine why it becomes non-responsive. ... The event logs are also useless as most errors are unrelated and can be ignored.

What you refer to as event logs is the Error Console, which is a very old facility and as you say wasn't designed to diagnose all classes of issues. One first needs to get a better idea of the class of problem and then apply the correct tool for diagnosis.

wsmwk · Post by **wsmwk** » May 27th, 2016, 6:25 am

i_am_jim wrote:Okay, I downloaded the latest version, disabled the antivirus, deleted the Mozila Thunderbird folder in Program Files (x86) and reinstalled -- no help.

I'm fairly sure I did all this before in an attempt to solve this problem.

One thing I hadn't mentioned, I have two,I think they're called Profiles -- two completely separate users. When a program needs to go to TBird it asks which one I want to go to.

Having two profiles is fine.

Windows safe mode make a difference?

How many pop accounts?
How many imap accounts?

i_am_jim · Post by **i_am_jim** » May 27th, 2016, 7:08 am

Not using in Windows safe mode.

No imap accounts

12 pop accounts in one profile and one in the other

wsmwk · Post by **wsmwk** » May 27th, 2016, 7:17 am

Excellent. Not saying it is definitely the cause in your case, but users who have a "large" number of pop accounts seem to tend to have this issue. How many are set to automatically check for new messages? Can you set half of them to not check?

i_am_jim · Post by **i_am_jim** » May 27th, 2016, 8:03 am

I hadn't looked at those settings in quite some time.

Of the twelve accounts 6 were checking mail at startup. Before this review 5 of those were checking mail every 5 minutes while using TBird. I just changed it so only three are checking while using, but the 6 still check at startup. The others only check when I do it manually.

The other profile checks mail at startup and every 5 minutes while using.

i_am_jim · Post by **i_am_jim** » May 27th, 2016, 1:34 pm

The changes noted above have not helped

Post by **tanstaafl** » June 5th, 2016, 11:29 pm

Upgrading to version 45.1.1 has made a big difference for me. It no longer has problems while I'm composing a message, and only occasionally becomes non-responsive when closing the compose message window. If it becomes non-responsive the problem doesn't go away if you wait a couple of minutes. I have 8 IMAP and 1 POP account.

TBird Locks up Often

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