T-Bird extremely slow

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esox07
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Joined: April 5th, 2017, 12:13 pm

T-Bird extremely slow

Post by esox07 »

It started two days ago. I have 5 or 6 IMAP gmail accounts in Tbird as well as a couple pop accounts. Two days ago, my main account started acting extremely slow. If I click on the inbox or other folders, it starts the busy circle spinning and it continues for a long time. If I send an email from the account, it goes out quick, but then takes forever to save to the "sent" folder and sometimes times out. If I send an email to the account, it takes a long time to actually show up. None of the other Gmail (Imap) accounts are doing this. I have deleted and re-added the account several times. I have attempted to delete the profile folders associated with the account and that hasn't helped. I have spent about 10 hours over the last few days on this with no luck. I did find that if I delete the account from Tbird and add it back as a POP account, it works fine. But I want it back as an Imap account. I am unsure at this point if the problem is with Gmail or Tbird. I am hoping someone has an easy solution to this problem.
Thanks,
Bruce
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tanstaafl
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Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm

Re: T-Bird extremely slow

Post by tanstaafl »

See if http://kb.mozillazine.org/Performance_-_Thunderbird helps. It might be due to a change in your PC's configuration outside of Thunderbird such as your security software.

However, if the problem is only with one account it might be due to a temporary problem with your email provider. See if there are alternate mail servers you can use with that account. I'd also log into webmail using a browser and see if its also slow. You can have performance problems with the mail server while webmail is acting normally, but its worth checking out. If your email provider has a support forum I suggest you browse it and see if other people have the same problem.
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esox07
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Joined: April 5th, 2017, 12:13 pm

Re: T-Bird extremely slow

Post by esox07 »

It is GMail. I have 6 or 7 Gmail accounts and this is the only one that has the problem. I have accessed it via webmail and it works fine there. I have run it with all addons disabled with no help there. I have an SST drive and it was defragged just yesterday. no help there.

OK something weird. I turned off all protection categories in Norton to included email. Then every one of my accounts were bombing out saying "unable to save sent message". So, I re-enabled all the protection categories and then my email seems to be working fine again to include the problematic account. I will have to do some more testing, but maybe Norton was the cause and by enabling and re-enabling all the protections, I reset something that was jacked up. I will post back in a day or so to update on if this ultimately fixed the problem.

Thanks for the suggestions. The norton thing was one of the possibilities listed in the KB article.
Bruce
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tanstaafl
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Re: T-Bird extremely slow

Post by tanstaafl »

Glad you found a workaround.

I'm not a fan of Norton as it has a reputation for causing interoperability problems. Personally I use the free versions of Bitdefender (anti-virus) and Malwarebytes (anti-malware). BitDefender doesn't "know" about mail but will get automatically called when a file is opened.
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esox07
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Joined: April 5th, 2017, 12:13 pm

Re: T-Bird extremely slow

Post by esox07 »

Well, it is back to the way it was. It seems whenever I try something, it works for a very short while and then goes back to the same way. I am thinking it has something to do with logging into the server. If I send a message, it goes out quick but then the dialog for "saving message to sent folder" pops up and winds up erroring out after many minutes or until I cancel it manually. So, I think folders are either corrupt or there is some kind of password issue. And as stated earlier I had deleted MSF files. So any help would be appreciated.
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tanstaafl
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Re: T-Bird extremely slow

Post by tanstaafl »

Sending uses the SMTP protocol to send the message but the IMAP protocol to upload a copy of the message to whatever sent folder you use. I doubt your problem has anything to do with your files in the profile.

My main account is a IMAP account with Fastmail. For over a year I had problems saving sent messages in a remote folder, but had no problems sending messages or normally using the remote folders. I discovered they have an option (available from the webmail user interface, even though it has nothing to do with webmail) to have the SMTP server automatically save a copy of the sent message. You had to specify this for a specific email address. That works great. I disabled Thunderbird saving a copy to avoid duplicates. A nice side effect is it cuts the amount of bytes sent in half since only one copy of the message is sent over the network (using SMTP) so things seem snappier.

I suggest you browse your email providers settings to see if they have any "personality" settings. If you're using a Gmail IMAP account the SMTP server automatically saves a copy in the sent items folder (you can't disable this feature), and you need to disable Thunderbird saving a copy to avoid duplicates.
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