[SOLVED] Long delay between opening TB and emails appearing

[nvx]

With the latest version of TB (v.60.8.0, 32-bit) run on multiple computers with Win 10 x64, I am experiencing a rather strange behaviour: when I open the application, it takes several minutes for new messages to appear in the folders of the two IMAP accounts I have configured (Gmail + industrial-grade Zimbra server). I can see on my phone that there are new messages present on the servers, yet I can hit the "Get Messages" button as much as I'd like (or switch between folders to force TB to refresh the message lists) and it makes no difference. Simply said, TB acts as if it were in the offline mode. After the initial "sort-of-offline" period, however, messages start to appear immediately when they are received by the server(s).

Each account contains less than 8,000 messages in total (i.e., in all the folders together). As for the inboxes, I work according to the "inbox zero" philosophy and, therefore, these contain only a few messages at a time. I doubt that the issue is due to slow network connectivity, because the respective computers are connected to a 1 Gbps wired LAN, which itself is connected to a 10 Gbps backbone.

Sizes of the new messages do not make any difference either. I have observed the same behaviour even when there were only a couple of short plain text messages per account.

For a start, I tried to "repair" the inboxes (Inbox –> Properties –> Repair Folder), yet saw no improvement. Is there anything else I could try to resolve the issue?

Thanks,

nvx

[tanstaafl]

Is "allow immediate server notifications when new messages arrive" checked in the server settings? That relies upon the client sending a IMAP IDLE command to tell the server that if a new message arrives the server should immediately notify it of it, rather than wait for the client to explicitly ask if there is new mail. Most of the time that will be in effect, but it might be temporarily canceled if the client is really busy.

My experience is that if you configure all three methods to check for new mail (on startup, every X minutes, and IDLE support) you never need to press the get messages button.

[nvx]

tanstaafl,

Thank you for your response. With Gmail, I have all these three methods enabled, while with the Zimbra server, I have only the first two (because the server did not seem to agree with IMAP IDLE in combination with the Windows Sleep mode, which I occasionally make use of).

This morning -- when the problem occurred again -- I tried to restart TB with all the add-ons disabled (via the menu item in "Help"). Unfortunately, this did not help.

nvx

[tanstaafl]

You could try temporarily disabling features that use background processes such as "offline folders" (enabled in synchronization & storage) and global search/indexing to see if they are causing a delay but unless you get a really big burst of new mail that doesn't sound like it would cause a problem.

I suggest you do a custom setup of a prior version of Thunderbrid in a different directory. It can reuse your existing profile, and doesn't require you to uninstall anything. See if it has the same problem. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Go_back_to_an ... hunderbird if you want to try that.

Another possibility is that your anti-virus scanner/security software doesn't play nicely with the latest TB version. You could try uninstalling it and relying upon windows defender and the built-in windows firewall for a while. You might need to enable windows defender using the settings app.

[nvx]

You could try temporarily disabling features that use background processes such as "offline folders" (enabled in synchronization & storage) and global search/indexing to see if they are causing a delay but unless you get a really big burst of new mail that doesn't sound like it would cause a problem.

The number of messages to be synchronised when I open TB usually is less than twenty per account (most often <500 kB of raw data, rarely above 1 MB). I am fairly sure this is not the cause.

I suggest you do a custom setup of a prior version of Thunderbrid in a different directory. It can reuse your existing profile, and doesn't require you to uninstall anything.

What a neat idea, thanks!

Another possibility is that your anti-virus scanner/security software doesn't play nicely with the latest TB version.

Yes, this also occurred to me, but I'd like to try everything else first before I temporarily switch to Widows Defender (especially since the respective computers have to have public IP addresses). The problem started appearing not only after the 60.8.0 update of TB, but also after the Windows 10 1903 update which came at around the same time. Considering the facts that (a) with major Windows updates inevitably come also the updates of AV software and (b) the AV software I use contains an e-mail scanning functionality which acts as a middleman between TB and the IMAP servers, it might very well be that something is wrong with the updated AV email component itself.

Anyway, I'll try what I can and post back once results are available.

nvx

[nvx]

So, here's what I tried:

• Install the penultimate x86 version of TB (with which I earlier noticed no problems at all): no improvement.
• Install the latest x64 version of TB: no improvement.
• Temporarily enable IMAP IDLE for both accounts: no improvement.
• Temporarily disable the email component of the AV software: problem fixed.

In other words, it seems that the version of the AV software which came right after installing the Windows 10 1903 update has been the cause. I will give it a couple of days and then enable the component and check again. In the meantime, I will just have to rely on the AV solutions running on the IMAP servers.

Thank you for the assistance in pinpointing the cause of the problem.

nvx

[WaltS48]

So, here's what I tried:

• Temporarily disable the email component of the AV software: problem fixed.

In other words, it seems that the version of the AV software which came right after installing the Windows 10 1903 update has been the cause. I will give it a couple of days and then enable the component and check again. In the meantime, I will just have to rely on the AV solutions running on the IMAP servers.

Thank you for the assistance in pinpointing the cause of the problem.

nvx

As far as I'm concerned this still applies and Windows Defender is all I use on Windows 10.

http://thundercloud.net/infoave/tutoria ... -scanning/