Memory usage
Thunderbird freezes after a few minutes of operation on my iMac.The activity monitor says that thunderbird is not responding, is using 100% of my cpu and is using 17.17 GB of memory. This happens even with Thunderbird operating in safe mode or Mac operating in safe mode. I have compacted all my folders, emptied the trash and junk folders. I think I need to uninstall and reinstall thunderbird but I don't want to loose all the emails I have saved. I am using the most recent version of thunderbird. I am running Catalina on my iMac and the iMac is brand new. I am not a computer person. I would love to be able to copy the support files for thunderbird, save them to another spot on my hard drive, uninstall thunderbird and install a new version, then pick up the stuff from the saved files as needed. I believe some support file for thunderbird is corrupted. I feel that rebuilding all the support files would solve the problem.Can someone help me do this?
All Replies (5)
I would suggest you try this first. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-database
How large is your profile folder? https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data
My profile folder is 4.4 GB. I guess maybe I need to do some house cleaning. I just tried rebuilding the global database file as you suggested in the way Mozilla support explained and still thunderbird froze after a few minutes. I was cleaning up my inbox at the time it froze.
I'm attaching a screen shot of the error message I get after some time of thunderbird freezing up,
Thanks for replying. It was great to find all those support files (it was counter intuitive for me at least to look for those files in profiles folder). Can I do anything with those files without opening up thunderbird? Any other suggestions?
I would suggest you do whatever it is apple suggests to check the integrity of the disk the profile is stored on.
The only way I can imagine that sort of memory issue is either a very poorly written addon (and even then it is a stretch.) but restarting fro the help menu with addons disabled and continuing in safe mode when prompted would bypass that. or disk allocation errors where a small file is somehow allocated a huge amount of disk space, hence the disk integrity check.
I ran disk utility and everything was fine with the disk. The freezes still happen in the safe mode when I run the Mac in safe mode and when I thunderbird in the safe mode. I have no idea what to do next. Could I possibly rename a copy of my profile folder, trash my existing thunderbird application and load a new one. After the new one is loaded, could I access the saved profile files for the information I need?
Just try a new profile.
From the help menu, select troubleshooting. in the basics part select the about:profiles entry. Us the button at the top of the tab to create a new Profile and then add your existing mail account and see if you still see the shudders.
Thunderbird stores all information apart of system integration setting in the profile along with all data. So a new profile achieves most of your last posts objectives without the disruption of changing names and reinstalling. You can reinstall if you think it will help, but there is no point messing with the profile to do so.