Thunderbird crashing after a few seconds

[Adlew]

Hi,

I have bad problems with Thunderbird crashing.

After problems with my old installation of Thunderbird I decided to make a clean install. As I suspected errors in the profile folder, for the first time in many years I didn't copy it but instead used the importexporttools extention to export as .eml and re-import,

To be really sure of a clean install I used RevoUninstaller and then CCleaner to clear out the registry. The new install went well, accounts set up, emails imported, mail rules and extensions set up. All good and working.

Next day Thunderbird opens but crashes as soon as it starts to download. Same in Safe mode, same with extensions disabled. Same after deleting .msf files and removing msgFilterRules.dat .

I then deleted the Thunderbird installation folder, reinstalled and it started and ran OK. After a while it crashed. It restarted OK but again crashed after a while. A few crashes later and I reckoned it was happening when Thunderbird checked for mail, so I upped the interval to 30 minutes. Worked for longer, even beyond the 30 minutes but then crashed sometime later and was back to starting and immediately crashing.

I'm using Windows 7 (64-bit) with Thunderbird 52.3 (32-bit), POP mail accounts. And I've opted for maildir for the quicker backups and better AV scans.

Anyone any suggestions? Should I revert to mbox?

Thanks,
Adam

[DanRaisch]

Did you add any extensions in the new installation or are you working with a plain, vanilla profile?
What security software is running on that system?
How many accounts and how many messages in the Inbox folders of each?

[Adlew]

Hi Dan,

Thanks for your reply.

There are several extensions but I have them disabled.

I'm using Avast AV.

There are 2 accounts as I've changed the others to just forward from
the server.

There aren't too many emails in the inbox as I have several other folders set up. Total size of the entire profile folder is 2 Gig. I've set up a separate profile just to store the archives from the account.

Bottom line is it didn't crash before the re-install with rather more emails in the folders.

Thanks,
Adam

[Adlew]

I've also tried versions 52.0 and 45.8 but there's no difference

[Adlew]

It occurred to me that there was a problem during setup when importing mail. Having imported into the wrong folder, I wanted to move it elsewhere. It appeared in the new folder but also remained in the old. Rebooting and compacting didn't help and I only got rid of it by deleting the folder. I think at that point the profile became corrupted.

This seems rather close to bugs I've read about and I don't think maildir is stable enough to use. I've now installed all over again and re-imported, this time using mbox and all seems OK.