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How do I start TB in safe mode on a Mac? The alt key does not work

  • 5 cavab
  • 1 has this problem
  • 3 views
  • Last reply by Matt

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On my Mac account, Thunderbird keeps on crashing. on my wife's account on the same Mac TB runs fine, and i guess this is a compatibility issue with one of the language packs. I want to start TB in safe mode, but the 'alt' key does not work. So, what is the way to start TB in safe mode on a Mac?

On my Mac account, Thunderbird keeps on crashing. on my wife's account on the same Mac TB runs fine, and i guess this is a compatibility issue with one of the language packs. I want to start TB in safe mode, but the 'alt' key does not work. So, what is the way to start TB in safe mode on a Mac?

All Replies (5)

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Hold the Option key when you launch TB (on Windows systems, hold Shift).

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Safe_mode#Mac_OS_X

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I have tried to start TB in the safe mode using the terminal command. This works in itself but the resulting behaviour is the same - TB crashes immediately without any chance on intervention.

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If this were a Windows computer, I'd suggest starting it in (Windows) safe mode, and then trying to launch TB. You can try the same thing on your Mac, but since the other user account works fine, I suspect the problem lies in your TB profile, as suggested.

In that case, I would try and create a new profile with Profile Manager, set up your accounts, and see if TB runs properly. If so, you can transfer the uncorrupted data from the old, damaged profile.

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Hi, I've created a new profile, and this makes TB start again. So that's progress! But - after an arbitrary time, TB crashes again whilst downloading the messages from the mail server. Restarting TB starts the message download from scratch so TB ends up to have multiple instances of the messages it has downloaded before the next crash....

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crash ids would help here I think.

Help menu > troubleshooting information and post some recent crash ids.