Not responding message upon startup
Everyone in our office that uses Thunderbird all had the same issue about five days ago that when we open the Thunderbird program it immediately tries downloading messages but then stalls and says Not Responding and you have to close down. You can't even be in there long enough to make changes or really click on much of anything.
We have tried using something called Thunderfix, which actually did seem to fix one computer, but all four others are still having the same issue. We have tried having the computer in Safe Mode with or without networking, both ways still does it. We have tried opening Thunderbird in safe mode, still have the problem.
We have done a system restore, with no avail and we have uninstalled and re-installed Thunderbird and that still doesn't help. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Chosen solution
I would create a new profile with Profile Manager, set up one account, and see if it works properly. If it does, you can add other accounts and transfer mail, calendars and contacts from the old profile. Doing this incrementally might indicate a source of the problem in the old profile.
If the account in the new profile still doesn't work, it suggests there's something outside of TB causing the problem (even though you've tried Windows safe mode).
To start Profile Manager, Winkey+R and type thunderbird.exe -p
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What is your anti-virus software?
We use Microsoft Security Essentials. I have tried shutting that off completely and opening Thunderbird and that doesn't work. And opening in safe mode (which from what I understand shuts off the anti-virus) does not work either. I don't believe it is an antivirus issue. I was able to get one computer to work after running a Thunderfix program, but doing the same thing for the others did not work.
Can you access the account via webmail and check if new messages are arriving? If so, maybe there's a corrupted message blocking downloads through TB, and deleting it in webmail will restore normal operations.
I can access webmail, but I don't think there is a corrupted message because I re-downloaded all messages on the server (webmail) on the one computer I was able to get fixed and there were no issues as far as that is concerned.
Thunderfix appears to simply delete the msf files, which is the same as right-clicking a folder, Properties, Repair Folder. TB automatically rebuilds the msf files (message index files) on restart, and for IMAP accounts this involves re-downloading the messages. If you can't start TB to repair folders, you can manually delete the msf files while TB is closed. Look in the profile folder, which is normally at C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\randomcharacterstring.default (allow viewing of hidden files and folders).
I have been this far into viewing the msf files, but I have not actually deleted them, but only renamed them. Should I actually delete the msf files then?
So I went ahead and tried deleting the msf file on one of the computers, ran a adwcleaner, restarted, and nothing - re-ran thunderfix still nothing. Still locking up and saying Not Responding just as before.
Suluhisho teule
I would create a new profile with Profile Manager, set up one account, and see if it works properly. If it does, you can add other accounts and transfer mail, calendars and contacts from the old profile. Doing this incrementally might indicate a source of the problem in the old profile.
If the account in the new profile still doesn't work, it suggests there's something outside of TB causing the problem (even though you've tried Windows safe mode).
To start Profile Manager, Winkey+R and type thunderbird.exe -p
This worked!!! It was the last thing I wanted to do, but it did work. I saved entire profile to an external hard drive, deleted entire thunderbird profile, unintalled the program, reinstalled, transferred all the local folders I had saved in the old email to the new profile. I did lose the address book, which is not a huge deal because I can export from another computer and I lost all the templates, but again they can be recreated. Thanks for the suggestion and assistance!!!
Personal Address Book and Collected Addresses can be transferred from the old profile by simply copying abook.mab and history.mab, and other .mab address books can be imported with MoreFunctionsForAddressBook. Templates can be recovered by copying the Templates mbox file from the Mail or ImapMail subfolder of each account into .../Mail/Local Folders.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Thunderbird