Thunderbird slowdown

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I can go along using Thunderbird for a long time, say an hour or so. I will delete a message, usually from the Inbox, and suddenly Thunderbird goes into hibernation for around a full minute or so. It just sits there with the spinning circle indicating it is busy. Clicking anywhere on Thunderbird will cause it to go white out and “not responding.” It will eventually come back, like I said in about a minute or so. This also happens after sending a message from time to time.

I have used Process Explorer to try to find anything that may be going on. Find nothing out of the ordinary. Have Googled the problem to oblivion, finding no help.

Incidentally, I used Thunderbird on an older machine, and it did this. I bought a new machine and moved my Thunderbird folders to it. Amazingly, it seems to have brought the problem with it. My computer is a quad core with 32 GB of memory and a 2 TB hard disk. No slouch.

Gosh, I like Thunderbird, but this problem is messing with my head.

Thanks for any help!

:confused:

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Did you leave tbird’s default folders as is, or, did you make any changes to where the data folders are? If not, then I’m on a rabbit trail and don’t know the answer. Ok, another thought, do you have “assertive” settings on any antivirus or antimalware programs? Sometimes, security settings come at a price, of functionality and/or performance speed. I’m just throwing out educated guesses.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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Thank you, RolandJS.

The only thing I’m doing that is “cute” is to run several Add-ons. However, I have run Thunderbird in safe mode with no Add-ons, and it will do the same thing. The default folders are left alone. All folders are kept compacted. All I use is Windows Defender with no aggressive settings. (Used to use Kapersky, but it was creating a lot of problems for me.)

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Ok, I’m going to listen in, learn from the other posters here!

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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Ok, I’m going to listen in, learn from the other posters here!

LOL. Yeah, me too. I just hope somebody comes up with an idea. I really want to stay with Thunderbird, I like it, but this problem is killing me! It’s very much no fun to be going happily along and suddenly take a 60+ second time out.

Thanks!

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How many accounts do you have in TB? I have four and find that going from one to another it manifests a similar problem. Mind you, it also doesn’t mark an email as read either. The only thing I’ve found that fixes it is to close TB and restart (not too quickly). Another possibility might be your email provider – for example, Yahoo had a cable cut a while ago and it affected TB quite badly as it just timed out – well it actually affected all ways of getting into Yahoo. If you have a webmail account the try it via your favourite browser – if that’s slow than the cause is at your email provider.

If none of the above is relevant, then I can’t help!

Eliminate spare time: start programming PowerShell

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dro, do you have antiviri and/or antimalware that monitors your email comings and goings? If so, it may be possible that even semi-assertive settings are causing a delay; not likely tho. Is there any other program that for some reason interacts with tbird? I’m simply burping up ideas.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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Have you explored the Mozillazine.org site for possible answers? They have a forum and a pretty complete knowledge base. From there I note that one common source of such problems comes from, predictably enough, add-ons/extensions/themes. As with Firefox, try starting it in safe mode (without your add-ons) to see if the problem remains, or disable all of them to see. If that resolves the problem, then re-enable one by one to find the one causing the problem. If the problem still occurs in safe mode, then try some more research in the knowledge base there or try the forum, where there are a lot of expert users who could help you.

Note: Mozillazine is a user-run forum, not an official Mozilla site. You could try searching the Mozilla site, as well, for additional answers.

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Yes, I have tried running in safe mode, but it did not help.

I have been a regular looking on Mozillazine for help, but nothing found so far. I have Googled to the far reaches of the internet and found solutions for hundreds of problems that I do not have.

I appreciate all the suggestions and will keep looking. I just turned off global search to see if that might help. It’ll take a while to be sure one way or the other, due to the sporadic nature of the problem. I’ll report back with any success.

Thanks!

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Well, you could always try the solution I was left with when I couldn’t fix a Firefox problem I was having. I ended up creating a brand-new profile, not a reinstallation of the program but a new profile, which creates a new set of user settings. From there, with Thunderbird, you would then install any add-ons, etc. Then copy over just your mail folder and subfolders from your original profile, assuming the new profile acts the way it’s supposed to.

Edited to Add: Sometimes it’s the profile itself that has somehow become corrupted. This solution works for both Firefox and Thunderbird in those situations.

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I think this is a good idea to try. I’ll see if I can get around to it tomorrow.

FYI, I did stop global search, and just had a slow down, so that has no effect.

Thanks!

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Access-mdb, I only have one account. I hope to shortly try Mountain Aerie’s suggestion about creating a new profile.

The worst part of this is that using process explorer and task manager, there is no unusual disk or cpu activity, or anything else. The only symptom is that Thunderbird just sits there not responding for over a minute.

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Does Search Indexer exist within this OS? I pretty disabled internal search index by removing all checkmarks from that l o n g list except for log, txt & doc files. Elsewhere I was told indexing can slow things down. Also, I did tell my tbird that Windows can be allowed to search its database.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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Does Search Indexer exist within this OS? I pretty disabled internal search index by removing all checkmarks from that l o n g list except for log, txt & doc files. Elsewhere I was told indexing can slow things down. Also, I did tell my tbird that Windows can be allowed to search its database.

Yes, I’m allowing Windows to index that. I just can’t imagine that would slow it down when all I’m doing is deleting one email.

I’ll try a new profile later and post anything interesting.

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I built a new profile and moved everything to it. No more of the one minute slow downs for 2 days. I think this may have been the only solution, as it appears my profile was corrupted.

With thanks to Mountain Aerie.

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I have had the terrible slowdown problem for well over a year. That is only in TBird and I’ve been unable to find any clue. I noticed this especially in deleting messages and moving to a different local folder. I’m using the “portable” version and all message folders and the program reside on a thumb drive. Windows has been recovered and I’ve re-installed TBird.

My computer is a Dell Inspiron N7010 64bit with 6GB memory, i3 processor running at 2.40GHz and more disk than I’ll ever need, Windows7-64, Thunderbird, Firefox, ZoneAlarm free, and AVG free.

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One thing I’ve noticed with TB is that, if you remove an account, TB doesn’t always delete the associated subfolder in your profile. For instance, when I changed from POP3 to IMAP, it involved creating new accounts (I have two email accounts), and I had problems. I removed and re-created the account several times. I have a BTinternet account, and I discovered I had several subfolders for the same server (mail.btinternet.com-1, mail.btinternet.com-2, and so on), and also folders for accounts that I’d stopped using years ago. I deleted all but the most recently-created ones (keeping them in the Recycle Bin in case I broke anything), and it all started working fine. I think TB gets confused easily, throws its hands in the air and breaks down in tears.

For all that, I love it and wouldn’t use anything else.

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Thanks for coming back to let us know. I’m glad to hear it worked for you.

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You bet. The only downside is that it was a pain in the nether region to create the new profile and copy everything over. Ugggh. Sure hope I didn’t miss copying something! Ha.

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Heh. Now you know why it wasn’t my first suggestion. It’s not a quick and easy fix for those of us who have used Firefox and/or Thunderbird for years. It’s time-consuming to create a new profile and then reinstall the various add-ons, and then make sure the settings and any databases for those add-ons are also copied over — all without messing up the new profile. But if it resolves a problem, then ultimately we can say it was worth it — at least once memory of the stress fades a bit. :rolleyes:

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Firefox and Thunderbird user appdata local and user appdata roaming are normally EZ to copy from one profile into another, one has to have those apps closed during the process, however the copying should be problem-free. Now, correct, if each profile has a different “look and feel,” then configuration changes have to made within X profiles.

"Take care of thy backups and thy restores shall take care of thee." Ben Franklin, revisted

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It might be a good idea to start a new thread to be sure your question is seen. In the meantime….

What have you checked and ruled out? Have you tried the suggestions in this thread, including restarting with add-ons disabled (via Help menu) and/or creating a new profile? You could create a new profile and send some test messages to see if the speed issue is resolved. If your mail takes a large amount of disk space, that could be slowing things down, as well. Did it start suddenly? Could it be related to your thumb drive (old, going bad, or full), i.e., is this true with other thumb drives?

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