Thunderbird 24 "Not responding"

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DanRaisch
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Re: Thunderbird 24 "Not responding"

Post by DanRaisch »

You've reported a lot of actions there but it's not clear how they were combined or if you are still working with those settings.

Are you running now in Mozilla Safe Mode? http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode

OK, time to try the a more aggressive option. First, backup your Profile ( http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_backup )

Create a new sub-folder under Local Folders. Move all of the messages currently in your Inbox to that new subfolder.

Confirm that you have made the recommended backup of your Profile.

Close Thunderbird and navigate to your Profile folder. Delete both the file Inbox.msf and the file Inbox with no extension.

Restart Thunderbird and you should find a new, empty Inbox folder in place. Copy any messages you MUST have in your Inbox from the sub-folder created above to the Inbox. Compact the Inbox after those messages are copied in.

The "Real Fix" entry in this article -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders#Real_fix also describes this process.
retexan599
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Re: Thunderbird 24 "Not responding"

Post by retexan599 »

Mr. Dan -- Just today I have taken the steps you suggested on the 24th. It is behaving at the moment. I am running in TB Safe Mode. Hoping for the best. Thanks.
Endicott
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Re: Thunderbird 24 "Not responding"

Post by Endicott »

Interesting post from redriver; I have a similar issue posted at viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2812193&p=13424681#p13424681 which has received no attention in the past week. I do not have McAfee and both malwarebytes and MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials = Windows Defender which ships with Win 8.0 / 8.1) claim they do not scan any files until they are about to be saved to disk.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Thunderbird 24 "Not responding"

Post by DanRaisch »

Endicott, please stay in that original thread rather than spread the discussion over multiple threads, making it harder to follow. You can post the above information that first thread to "bump" it and see if anyone has advice to offer.
throwitaway
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Re: Thunderbird 24 "Not responding"

Post by throwitaway »

Updated from TB 3.1.20 to latest TB 24 (via intermediate TB 12 upgrade). TB 24 worked ok for a few hours then next day I got the "Not Responding" issue.

Tried SafeMode, disabling Comodo Firewall/Antivirus, XP Compatibility mode. Couldn't even run Compact as TB was unusable.

Ended up reverting back to TB 3.1.20 as I had a backup of both the profile and the C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird files. Seems to work as before now. Fingers crossed. Running Win7 Pro 64bit with about 70GB TB profile mostly in POPs and a couple of IMAP Gmail accounts.

I knew upgrading wasn't going to be straightforward so I held off for years thinking. Glad I did backups before!
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DanRaisch
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Re: Thunderbird 24 "Not responding"

Post by DanRaisch »

How many messages in the Inbox of those POP accounts?
Did you regularly compact before updating or was that only in response to the problem?
Do you see the same problem if you create a new profile and add only one of the Gmail IMAP accounts in that environment?
throwitaway
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Re: Thunderbird 24 "Not responding"

Post by throwitaway »

DanRaisch wrote:How many messages in the Inbox of those POP accounts?
Did you regularly compact before updating or was that only in response to the problem?


7K in the main Local Folders Inbox. And several sub-folders with 10K to 15K and one with 70K. Other account folders are smaller.

I think I have a huge Trash folder with like 4GB / 34K. Junk Folder is 30K

DanRaisch wrote:How many messages in the Inbox of those POP accounts?
Do you see the same problem if you create a new profile and add only one of the Gmail IMAP accounts in that environment?


Gmail main account Inbox folders are smaller - like 4K. I believe I had compacted most of Local Folders before upgrading - not sure about the Gmail ones.

I could not try your suggestion with a new profile as I have now reverted to TB 3.

I believe the key symptom here is that it worked temporarily after the upgrade (tested folder search, send/receive, write send email, clicked around). So it seems a process kicks in after a few hours, which blocks the system. I saw another commenter in this thread with the same symptoms after 24 hours.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Thunderbird 24 "Not responding"

Post by DanRaisch »

throwitaway wrote:I believe the key symptom here is that it worked temporarily after the upgrade (tested folder search, send/receive, write send email, clicked around). So it seems a process kicks in after a few hours, which blocks the system. I saw another commenter in this thread with the same symptoms after 24 hours.


Perhaps but these are only two reports against hundreds of thousands of updated installations. We would have anticipated more if it was really an issue with the update.

Note that POP accounts with thousands of messages in their Inbox are at real risk. Storing messages in the Inbox of any POP type email account is a very bad practice. As the busiest area of the system, the Inbox is most at risk of data corruption and corresponding data loss. The more messages in the Inbox, the more messages at risk of loss. Creating an organization of folders, typically under Local Folders, and moving all but the most recent messages from the Inbox to that structure, will help to minimize risk of loss and improve performance.
throwitaway
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Re: Thunderbird 24 "Not responding"

Post by throwitaway »

DanRaisch wrote:Note that POP accounts with thousands of messages in their Inbox are at real risk. Storing messages in the Inbox of any POP type email account is a very bad practice. As the busiest area of the system, the Inbox is most at risk of data corruption and corresponding data loss. The more messages in the Inbox, the more messages at risk of loss. Creating an organization of folders, typically under Local Folders, and moving all but the most recent messages from the Inbox to that structure, will help to minimize risk of loss and improve performance.


The online POP accounts only keep 2 months worth of messages then deleted (with only local copy in TB left), so they are relatively small.

I'll be moving more messages outside the main Inbox in the future. Maybe taking it down to 3K message or something. Either way, I am sticking to TB 3 for the foreseeable future.
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DanRaisch
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Re: Thunderbird 24 "Not responding"

Post by DanRaisch »

Three thousand messages in a POP Inbox folder is two thousand, nine hundred and seventy five too many.
throwitaway
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Re: Thunderbird 24 "Not responding"

Post by throwitaway »

DanRaisch wrote:Three thousand messages in a POP Inbox folder is two thousand, nine hundred and seventy five too many.


Maybe if you use a Sinclair ZX80 with a Hayes 300 baud modem, or TB 24. Works just fine with TB 3 though.
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Re: Thunderbird 24 "Not responding"

Post by DanRaisch »

Didn't say it wouldn't work. I just said it was too risky. Spreading that number of messages over a chronological folder hierarchy would prevent the loss of all 3000 at one time should the message file become corrupted. But it's your data so take whatever pat you want with it.
nickjr
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Re: Thunderbird 24 "Not responding" - SOLVED

Post by nickjr »

Solved my "Not Responding" problem today by turning off McAfee "Real Time Scanning". Have McAfee All-Access Total Protection program. Had previously turned off McAfee firewall and disabled all McAfee plug-ins and extensions in TB, compacted, rebuilt TB, ran as administrator, ran in Windows XP compatibility mode, etc etc etc. Nothing worked until I turned off the real time virus scanning. TB performs fine now.

Used Thunderbird for last 6 months, no real problems. Have lots of emails, maybe 40GB in different accounts but keep them all in separate folders with each folder no bigger than 2 or 3 GB. Switched to TB because Outlook was constantly freezing up, (I thought) due to massive .PST file.

Suddenly a few weeks ago TB stops responding, just on my main email account which had the most emails by far. Smaller email accounts (yahoo, attglobal) were responding okay.

Thought TB reached some kind of "threshold" with huge number of emails (albeit in different folders) and just crashed and burned.

Now thinking maybe some kind of update to McAfee may have been responsible but dont know for sure.

Saw previous posts about not knowing whether users found solutions here or went away unsatisfied so I wanted to post my resolution, hope this helps.
habakkuk18
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Re: Thunderbird 24 "Not responding"

Post by habakkuk18 »

nickjr hit the nail on the head (for me anyway) =D>
thanks for posting
habakkuk18
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Re: Thunderbird 24 "Not responding"

Post by habakkuk18 »

DanRaisch, I solved my "Not Responding" problem today by turning off McAfee "Real Time Scanning". I do not want/ cannot (because of work), leave real time scanning off. do you think this can be solved by TB or McAfee?
Windows 7 ;Firefox Version 28.0 ;Thunderbird Version 24.5.0
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