Thunderbird is already running?

User Help for Mozilla Thunderbird
shadowkid
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Joined: March 21st, 2006, 8:43 pm

Thunderbird is already running?

Post by shadowkid »

I had just installed Thunderbird, and had only run it twice. When I went to load the program tonight, I got a message that said:

"Thunderbird is already running, but not responding. To open a new window you must close the existing thunderbird process, or restart your system"

I have rebooted and that didn't work, tried cntrl-alt-del and didn't see any Thunderbird processes that I know of, and have also tried uninstalling and reinstalling the software several times, still to the same result.

Could anyone help me?

Thanks,

Adam
Last edited by shadowkid on March 22nd, 2006, 12:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Daifne
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Post by Daifne »

Go into your profile http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder#Thunderbird and look for a file named parent.lock. If it exists, delete it.
Guest
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Post by Guest »

The parent.lock file is listed under my Firefox profile, but not the Thunderbird one.

I figured it out though. I had saved a profile before I formatted my HDD so I could keep all of my local e-mails when I reinstalled Thunderbird. When I copied it over, I didn't realize that I had to name the copied profile the same as the one it's replacing, otherwise it gives me that error message and doesn't start up....in case anyone else experienced the same problem. :-)
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Daifne
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Post by Daifne »

Another way would have been to copy the contents of the old profile into the new, but you did good.
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Digger
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Post by Digger »

Another possible solution is to open Task Manager ctrl/alt/del and look in the processes tab. Just click to end Thunderbird process. Then re-open the program.
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Daifne
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Post by Daifne »

That will stop it for this instance, but it it's doing it consistently, we need to find the problem which is usually in the profile.
shadowkid
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Joined: March 21st, 2006, 8:43 pm

Post by shadowkid »

Daifne wrote:Another way would have been to copy the contents of the old profile into the new, but you did good.



Well I tried that as well, but was having the same problem.

Thanks for your help guys.
Guest
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Post by Guest »

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Daifne
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Post by Daifne »

You're welcome, Shadowkid.
PeterInCanberra
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Post by PeterInCanberra »

I had the same symptoms but my reason was different. I installed Thunderbird in the past, didn't like it at the time and removed it. When I reinstalled I got the above error even when there was nothing in the Profile directory. Deleting the existing profile (I imagine bits of my original profile were sitting in the registry somewhere) and creating a new one fixed the problem.
u_quality
Posts: 1
Joined: March 29th, 2006, 11:40 am

Post by u_quality »

None of the above solutions worked for me. I found the problem though. The profiles.ini was messed up.
C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Thunderbird\profiles.ini

It should look something like this:

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/fg0tsarm.default
Default=1

Backup your profiles.ini, copy and paste the above code into the new profiles.ini, change the Path to your profile.. and badda bing... you're in business.
Worked for me anyways....

Cheers!
uli_k
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Post by uli_k »

Yet another potential reason: the path to the default profile is specified wrong in profiles.ini

I had a typo in there after moving my profile and was presented with the same error message.

HTH
Spike0xFF
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Post by Spike0xFF »

Same (inaccurate) error message, slightly different scenario and solution: I just installed, uninstalled, and re-installed TB 1.5.0.8 (It exploded the 1st time when I tried to import my mail from Outlook) and got the "Thunderbird is already running" message every time I tried to run it. There was no thunderbird.exe process running, and this folder existed but was empty:
C:\Documents and Settings\Dosadi\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles
However the profiles.ini file looked like this (I opened it with Notepad)
---------------------------------
[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/vzvtvy66.default
----------------------------------
There was no such folder as Profiles/vzvtvy66.default, so I edited profiles.ini:
StartWithLastProfile=0
And I deleted the entire [Profile0] section and saved the file back to disk.
Voila, Thunderbird launches and pops up the Import wizard.
_/\_
pgc
Posts: 35
Joined: December 1st, 2004, 10:44 pm

all my e-mail unavailable.

Post by pgc »

Hi,
I run into a similar problem.
I had to reset my XP professional (by pressing for 4 seconds the on/off button of my laptop), because it didn't switched off anymore after updating a graphic card driver.

When I restarted, thunderbird didn't recognize my old e-mail profile and asked me to create a new profile.

First, I backed up my profile (that was still there). After that, I reboot the machine and when I restarted thunderbird it said "thunderbird is already running etc.". After editing again profile.ini thunderbird restarted, but my e-mail were still unavailable.

Note that:
1) the profile path is correct in the "profile.ini" file
2) there are no parent.lock files
3) no processes called Thunderbird are available in the task manager.

What else I can do?
I run all the checks listed in this thread.

thanks in advance for any advice or pointers to further tips
pgc
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Daifne
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Post by Daifne »

Close Thunderbird and open the profile manager. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_manager
Create your new profile, naming it something other than "default", and setup your accounts. Make sure it's working including for sending and receiving mail.

Then I want you to install this extension: Mboximport: http://nic-nac-project.de/~kaosmos/mboximport-en.html

To install a Thunderbird extension do the following:
Right click the download link and choose "Save Link As...". Then open Thunderbird, in Thunderbird go to Tools->Extensions->Install. Find the just downloaded .xpi file and select it. The installation will now begin. You will need to close and reopen Thunderbird to complete the install.

When it's installed, first select the folder you want to import into and then go to Tools>Import/Export in Mbox/eml format and under it, Import Mbox File. In the next screen you will get a choice to either import a selected file or to select a directory. Select the second and when you get to the Windows file navigation window, find your OLD profile find your account folder under C:\Documents and Settings\*user name*\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\*random string.profile name*\Mail and then select each account folder one at a time. This means that you will need to go through the Tools menu once for each account. The messages will be in a new folder named for the original with three numbers, ex: Inbox123, which you can then move the messages out of and sort as you want.

For this next bit, you will need to find your profile: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder#Thunderbird and to do so, you need to set Windows to "View hidden files and folders" and to not "Hide extensions for known file types". See this for easy instructions for how to do this: http://spywarewarrior.com/viewtopic.php?t=272

For your address books, Close TB. Find your old profile and in the top level of it you will find some files with the .mab extension. TB creates two, abook.mab and history.mab. These are your main address books. These files can be just copied right into your new profile at the same level if you haven't added any new ones to the new address book. Let them copy over any existing files. If you do have addresses in the new address book already, then rename the old ones and copy them in that way. If you created any of your own please let me know, they will also be named with the .mab extension, but they won't be automatically picked up.

If you have any filters set in your accounts, the files you want to copy is msgFilterRules.dat This goes in the Mail/*account* folder. For Junk controls training, the file is training.dat and it is kept in the top level of the profile folder.

When you have completed this, compact your folders now and regularly in the future. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders

That should be everything. Let me know how it turns out.
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