Thunderbird 78.1 randomly freezing for 30-60 seconds

[HankFriedman]

I just ran Task Manager (Windows 7 64 bit sp1 system) during a particularly nasty Thunderbird freeze and Thunderbird was using 474,360 K of memory.

That seems way too high.

Do you think it has a memory leak?

[HankFriedman]

I thought I already posted this but it's not showing so:

I used Task Manager in Windows 7 64 bit to help me see why I was getting so many freezes, and discovered that Thunderbird was using 474,360K of memory!

By the way, earlier versions of Thunderbird all worked perfectly and I haven't changed anything since installing version 78.

[HankFriedman]

Even after fixing the memory leak, Thunderbird still freezes just as much.

It's almost unusable.

Should I try the 64 bit version?

I did once before but it didn't solve anything.

[tanstaafl]

How much memory does it take shortly after you start it?

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Te ... e_Problems

[kungfujoe]

According to https://www.digitalcitizen.life/how-use ... ty-malware and other sources you can manually run Windows Defender while in windows safe mode with networking. What isn't clear is whether it will still automatically scan when you open a file.

I certainly didn't manually run Windows Defender while in Safe Mode, but whether it's active in the background by default, I don't know.

I installed Avast last night, and while I haven't been using Thunderbird a whole lot since then, I've had one brief freeze where the UI stopped responding and Thunderbird's CPU usage spiked. It did so for long enough for me to see it in my Rainmeter system monitoring widget, but not for long enough for me to open Resource Monitor and look for anything odd there.

I'm not sure if that's promising or not... Thunderbird 68 and earlier didn't do this at all, so even a brief freeze represents a problematic new misbehavior for TB 78, but so far I haven't experienced the long, crippling freezes I've occasionally seen before.

[HankFriedman]

How much memory does it take shortly after you start it?

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Te ... e_Problems

Now that I've managed Thunderbird's memory, the freezes seem shorter and milder than before.

But they still happen a little.

FYI: at startup TB 78 is using 15,000 - 50,000 K

[kungfujoe]

I installed Avast last night, and while I haven't been using Thunderbird a whole lot since then, I've had one brief freeze where the UI stopped responding and Thunderbird's CPU usage spiked. It did so for long enough for me to see it in my Rainmeter system monitoring widget, but not for long enough for me to open Resource Monitor and look for anything odd there.

No luck. I've had a bunch of longer, more disruptive freezes. Something is still very wrong. I'll have to go back to TB68 or something.

[tanstaafl]

78.2.0-pre build1 was released yesterday for testing. It doesn't appear to have the OpenPGP support yet that was targeted for 78.2 so there might be several more builds until 78.2 is released.

See http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... #p14869472 if you want to go back to 68.* and wait a while for a better 78.* build.

[gidweisz]

I just want to report that I've had the very same issue, though since 78.1.1 update.
I have a Win10 system. I spent hours working on it and finally killed my system and
had to send the PC to the shop. Fingers crossed. The crashes happen within a short while
after opening TB, or after a very few operations of any type. Safe mode doesn't help
as many other moves also did not.I'm rather in PTSD mode from this, from a few days ago.
Then, today, I visited my wife's Win10 PC, and we set out to write an email to our County
Commissioners, and I discovered she has the very same problem! She also has 78.1.1.
I wanted to report this because it's not just one person having the problem.
I'm too drained to get back into working on it, but I sure hope it gets solved.
Any progress definitely very much appreciated.
gideon
EDIT(a couple of hours later): I just noticed that my wife's TB is not consistent about its crashes.
It now worked for me in composing and sending an email just now. But its behavior earlier was identical
with what happened with my own PC's Thunderbird. Get into it, and you're only a few clicks away from
a crash. But the similarity was stark.
EDIT: (A few minutes later) Now we tried to write a real email, and it froze in the middle of the third line.
We waited for two minutes without touching it, and it was still frozen. Came back a few minutes later
and it was no longer frozen. So, I wonder, do we need to wait for a later version of TB? Or....?
gideon

[kungfujoe]

I finally made the time to delete Thunderbird 78 and install 68.9.0. It was quicker and easier than I thought it might be, so I wish I'd done it awhile ago. I've been managing a bunch of emails, and I'm not experiencing any of the freezing that I see in 78. It is being very well-behaved! So the problem isn't with my profile, it's something with Thunderbird 78, or with how it interacts with my installation of Windows 10 Pro x64.

Recap:
- All versions of Thunderbird 78 were periodically freezing for spans of 30 seconds to 3-4 minutes at a time. The UI would enter a "(Not Responding)" state, and the app would use a significant amount of CPU time (approximately one full logical core, though it wasn't strictly being limited to a single core)
- Thunderbird Safe Mode didn't prevent the freezing
- Windows Safe Mode with Networking didn't prevent the freezing
- Replacing Windows Defender with Avast Antivirus didn't prevent the freezing
- Replacing Thunderbird 78.1.0 with 68.9.0 appears to have prevented the freezing

[Edit: I just updated to 68.11. I guess I missed that 68.9 wasn't the latest when I perused the release site. Oops!]

[HankFriedman]

I finally made the time to delete Thunderbird 78 and install 68.9.0. It was quicker and easier than I thought it might be, so I wish I'd done it awhile ago. I've been managing a bunch of emails, and I'm not experiencing any of the freezing that I see in 78. It is being very well-behaved! So the problem isn't with my profile, it's something with Thunderbird 78, or with how it interacts with my installation of Windows 10 Pro x64.

Recap:
- All versions of Thunderbird 78 were periodically freezing for spans of 30 seconds to 3-4 minutes at a time. The UI would enter a "(Not Responding)" state, and the app would use a significant amount of CPU time (approximately one full logical core, though it wasn't strictly being limited to a single core)
- Thunderbird Safe Mode didn't prevent the freezing
- Windows Safe Mode with Networking didn't prevent the freezing
- Replacing Windows Defender with Avast Antivirus didn't prevent the freezing
- Replacing Thunderbird 78.1.0 with 68.9.0 appears to have prevented the freezing

And this issue is also with Windows 7 64 bit OS not just Windows 10

I thought that managing TB 78's memory leaks would help, but unfortunately not.

[kungfujoe]

I finally made the time to delete Thunderbird 78 and install 68.9.0. It was quicker and easier than I thought it might be, so I wish I'd done it awhile ago.

I spoke too soon! Thunderbird 78 uses a new address book format, and when you go back to 68, it doesn't convert it back for you, it just nukes the whole address book.

Now I have to decide which is worse - losing ~20 years of email addresses or having an email client that constantly freezes, making it almost unusable.

I created a new thread trying to get help back-converting my address book (since this thread is focused on a different problem), but since the I previously said downgrading solves the problem, I figured I should give fair warning here in this thread that downgrading will cause a significant problem, too!

[gidweisz]

I wonder if this only happens to people (like me) who use POP.
Anyone see it with IMAP accounts?

[DanRaisch]

I run Thunderbird on two systems, with two POP accounts and one IMAP in both cases. I've seen no freezing or anything of the sort on either system with either account type. I don't see a correlation between the issue and the server type.

[kungfujoe]

I wonder if this only happens to people (like me) who use POP.
Anyone see it with IMAP accounts?

I stopped using POP3 a few years ago. I'm using IMAP, as I indicated in some of the early messages in this topic.