Thunderbird 78.1 randomly freezing for 30-60 seconds

[kungfujoe]

I know a pinned topic says to avoid Thunderbird 78 until 78.2 is eventually released, but my copy unfortunately updated before I saw that... and of course, I lost all of my extensions and their associated capabilities.

Along with that, though, Thunderbird has been randomly freezing on me. It doesn't seem to correlate with any specific action I take. It can happen when it's in the background or when I'm trying to switch from reading one message to another. Since it periodically checks my accounts in the background using multiple timers, I don't have an easy way of knowing if the freezing corresponds with calls to one of my IMAP servers or RSS feeds. When it freezes, it goes into a "Not Responding" state, no aspect of the UI will respond, and it appears to completely max out one logical core/thread on my CPU. It'll stay there for somewhere on the order of half a minute to a full minute, and then it'll resume working normally, as if nothing happened. I've noticed the freezes multiple times every day, seemingly at random, but thankfully, it's not something that happens every few minutes (i.e. it definitely doesn't happen with every IMAP server call)

This has persisted across multiple versions of 78.0 and continues in 78.1.0. I've looked around, and I'm not seeing other reports of this. Does anyone have ideas on how I can troubleshoot this to determine what is causing it, and hopefully to resolve it?

I've been using Thunderbird for many years, and I don't recall it ever behaving like this. I can at least say with certainty that pre-78 versions have not behaved this way for me in the last few years.

Note: As others have mentioned, I found that Thunderbird didn't actually deactivate all of my incompatible extensions. I disabled the remaining extensions manually, in hopes that it would resolve this problem, but it did not. The only extension I have enabled is "Display Mail User Agent T," which is a fork of "Display Mail User Agent," updated in late July for Thunderbird 78.

[tanstaafl]

Try disabling all of your background processes by disabling syncing of IMAP accounts and disabling global search/indexing and restarting Thunderbird. I suggest you also try running in safe mode (help -> restart with add-ons disabled) for a while.

I haven't run into problems like yours with 78.*. Are you using a anti-virus scanner that knows about Thunderbird? They can frequently cause problems when updating to a newer major version. I'm using Windows Defender and the paid version of MalwareBytes Antimalware.

See if http://kb.mozillazine.org/Performance_-_Thunderbird gives you any ideas such as disabling hardware acceleration (which was re-enabled with version 78).

[kungfujoe]

Try disabling all of your background processes by disabling syncing of IMAP accounts and disabling global search/indexing and restarting Thunderbird. I suggest you also try running in safe mode (help -> restart with add-ons disabled) for a while.

I haven't run into problems like yours with 78.*. Are you using a anti-virus scanner that knows about Thunderbird? They can frequently cause problems when updating to a newer major version. I'm using Windows Defender and the paid version of MalwareBytes Antimalware.

See if http://kb.mozillazine.org/Performance_-_Thunderbird gives you any ideas such as disabling hardware acceleration (which was re-enabled with version 78).

I'm actually just running Windows 10's built-in virus scanner. I dropped Avast! a handful of months ago, since it seems that Microsoft's offering is performing similarly well in recent years, while being a good deal less intrusive.

I just restarted in Safe Mode, and will try that for the rest of the day. Unfortunately, since this doesn't happen very frequently, it'll be hard to know for sure that the problem is gone (though easy to notice when it happens again). If the problem recurs in safe mode, I'll turn off mail checking and RSS syncing.

[kungfujoe]

No luck on the Safe Mode. It froze again. I guess tomorrow I'll try disabling all of the server update features (which is more of a pain in the butt, since I think I have to edit each account and each RSS feed).

[kungfujoe]

And no luck on disabling the server checks. The freezing is clearly not related to checking the IMAP servers for new mail or checking the RSS feeds. All of that is disabled, and it's still freezing.

[tanstaafl]

I suggested disabling syncing (uses a background process), not checking for new mail.

You might want to try using a older version of Thunderbird with the same profile (add --allow-downgrade command line argument) to rule out it being a problem with your profile.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Go_back_to_an ... hunderbird

[kungfujoe]

I suggested disabling syncing (uses a background process), not checking for new mail.

Thanks for the clarification. I failed to notice those were two separate options! I've disabled syncing on all three of my accounts, and since I'll be heading to bed fairly shortly, I'll keep an eye out for freezes tomorrow after work.

Failing that, I'll try going back to 68.11. Thanks for the link and details there, too. I didn't realize I could go back to a previous version without screwing things up.

[kungfujoe]

No luck on disabling syncing, either. I've had a bunch of freezes. I should have time this weekend to try reverting back to 68.11 to see if that resolves it.

[wsmwk]

@kungfujoe

The changes to add-on capabilities in version 78 makes it less likely (though not impossible) for performance issues to be add-on related, meaning less likely that Thunderbird safe mode might help.

So a good first tool is Windows safe mode, mainly in cases of high CPU (which you cite), or high disk activity:
- win10 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/hel ... -safe-mode

[mgagnonlv]

I don't use Thunderbird 78, but with older versions of Thunderbird, I had problems with backup compaction on slow computers.

One suggestion that works fine with me is to turn off background compaction.

Go into Tools –> Options –> Advanced –> Network and Disk Space
Look for "Compact folders when it would save at least xx MB total (at the bottom of the window).

Either enter a large number like 100 or 200 MB which means it won't compact so frequently (but it will take longer each time) or uncheck this option. However, if you stop all automatic compaction, make sure you go through each account and compact them every 2 weeks or so.

[tanstaafl]

If you have IMAP accounts think about setting mail.imap.expunge_option to 2 using the config editor as an alternative to automated compacting. When 20 messages have been deleted that expunges them. That is a different mechanism than compacting, but accomplishes the same thing (physically gets rid of hidden messages marked for deletion). I've never heard of anybody having freezes due to expunging.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Deleting_mess ... P_accounts

[kungfujoe]

The changes to add-on capabilities in version 78 makes it less likely (though not impossible) for performance issues to be add-on related, meaning less likely that Thunderbird safe mode might help.

So a good first tool is Windows safe mode, mainly in cases of high CPU (which you cite), or high disk activity:
- win10 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/hel ... -safe-mode

As I noted in my initial post, I disabled or uninstalled all of my extensions except for one that was specifically updated for TB78 (and disabling it didn't help), so this isn't add-on related. I do plan to try running Win10 in Safe Mode a bit later to see if that helps. I also found a thread from a previous version of TB where people resolved this problem by explicitly telling Windows Defender to exempt the Thunderbird user profile directory, but that didn't do anything at all for this problem (and not having the folder exempted didn't cause me any problems in TB 68 [edit: previously said 78. Oops!])

I don't use Thunderbird 78, but with older versions of Thunderbird, I had problems with backup compaction on slow computers.

This is definitely not a slow computer issue. I finally built a new system pretty recently, after almost a decade. I'm running a Ryzen 9 3900X with 32GB RAM, and both the OS and Thunderbird are installed on a NVMe Samsung 970 EVO Plus 1TB SSD. (The build did not coincide with the TB78 update. I was running prior versions for quite awhile without experiencing these problems since getting the new hardware).

I do think this has something to do with server connections, whether it's Thunderbird itself hanging up on server connections, or Windows Defender or some other part of Windows. Last time, after finding that turning syncing off didn't resolve the problem I turned syncing back on. Doing so initiated a complete re-sync of all of my mailboxes, thousands of messages. While it was syncing those messages, Thunderbird froze repeatedly, for 2-3 minutes at a time, working for only a handful of seconds in between freezes. I ended out going to bed a good 20 minutes later than I intended just because I was waiting for Thunderbird to respond for long enough that I could shut it down without killing the process and potentially messing up my profile or something. Prior to that, it was freezing randomly while I used it (not just when deleting messages; sometimes while trying to write a message).

If this does turn out to be a Windows Defender problem, I've got no issues with going back to using Avast! I used it on my previous system, and I was generally content with it, even if the in-app advertisements to purchase more features were a little bit annoying.

[tanstaafl]

Is “Allow Windows Search to search messages” UNchecked in tools -> options -> general -> system integration?

There used to be a very old bug that could randomly cause a freeze for about a minute due to it creating places.sqlite-shm and places.sqlite-wal directories (NOT files with those names) in the profile. The workaround was to delete those directories. It was fixed in version 21 but regression bugs happen.

You wrote you think this has something to do with server connections. Please explain/elaborate why you think that since you also wrote that it "doesn't seem to correlate with any specific action I take" (such as opening a different folder or composing a message). I'm not trying to argue whether it does or not, I just want to understand your thinking.

What email providers do you use?

What type of Internet connection are you using? If its wireless is it practical to connect via a Ethernet cable for a while to see if you are running into some type of wireless issue? Its not unheard of for a wireless connection to appear to be working great (especially for Firefox), and eventually found to cause intermittent performance problems for Thunderbird.

If its not a major problem, consider disabling your RSS feeds accounts for a while to see if they might be the culprit.

[kungfujoe]

Is “Allow Windows Search to search messages” UNchecked in tools -> options -> general -> system integration?

Yes, it's unchecked. I may have disabled it way back before version 21. I don't remember.

You wrote you think this has something to do with server connections. Please explain/elaborate why you think that since you also wrote that it "doesn't seem to correlate with any specific action I take" (such as opening a different folder or composing a message). I'm not trying to argue whether it does or not, I just want to understand your thinking.

I think it has something to do with server connections because it will normally freeze once in awhile. Anywhere from a few times per hour to less than hourly. However, as soon as I re-enabled syncing, and it tried to sync thousands of messages, it froze for a few minutes, came back for less than a minute, froze for a few minutes, came back for less than a minute, etc, while it was actively syncing between its local storage and the IMAP server. (I also noticed that the syncing did not continue when it was frozen. If it was stuck on, for example, message 743 of 1234 when it stopped responding, it would eventually resume at 744 shortly after the freeze stopped, sometimes after saying "paused," so it hadn't incremented during the UI freeze). The fact that it could not remain functional for more than a minute at a time while having so much more intensive server interaction than usual

What email providers do you use?

What type of Internet connection are you using? If its wireless is it practical to connect via a Ethernet cable for a while to see if you are running into some type of wireless issue? Its not unheard of for a wireless connection to appear to be working great (especially for Firefox), and eventually found to cause intermittent performance problems for Thunderbird.

I'm syncing with two accounts on my domain host (DreamHost), and one rarely-used GMail account, all via IMAP. My computer is wired to the router, which is wired to our 100/100Mbps FiOS connection. I have plenty of devices connected via WiFi, but this computer is on a Cat6 connection to a GigE port on my router (I think the router-to-FiOS cable is Cat5e, but that offers more than enough bandwidth for a 100Mbps connection).

If its not a major problem, consider disabling your RSS feeds accounts for a while to see if they might be the culprit.

Disabling RSS feed checking was one of the first things I tried, along with disabling regular checks for new emails, and it did not help.

[wsmwk]

The changes to add-on capabilities in version 78 makes it less likely (though not impossible) for performance issues to be add-on related, meaning less likely that Thunderbird safe mode might help.

So a good first tool is Windows safe mode, mainly in cases of high CPU (which you cite), or high disk activity:
- win10 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/hel ... -safe-mode

As I noted in my initial post, I disabled or uninstalled all of my extensions except for one that was specifically updated for TB78 (and disabling it didn't help), so this isn't add-on related. I do plan to try running Win10 in Safe Mode a bit later to see if that helps. I also found a thread from a previous version of TB where people resolved this problem by explicitly telling Windows Defender to exempt the Thunderbird user profile directory, but that didn't do anything at all for this problem (and not having the folder exempted didn't cause me any problems win TB 78)

Individual disable attempts are not always successful with AV and other software. Which why Windows safe mode and Thunderbird safe mode are a more trustworthy acid test not to be ignored.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Te ... e_Problems has a more full list of possible issues.

Also, given your description of download activity, my guess is you have more than one issue.