And does your computer come with some sort of anti virus?

Hey. Thanks for replying. It has Trend Micro, but it is not set to scan emails. Also it ran for 5 months with Trend and had no problems.

create and exception in trend for the Thunderbird profile so it is not subject to on access scanning.

I am guessing..... but most likely trend is trying to scan the same files Thunderbird is updating. It would certainly explain the lockups.

You might also try compacting your folders. as they grow these sorts of errors become more prominent as the anti virus takes longer and longer to do what it is doing.

I always had compacting on for over 30 MB. I disabled it yesterday to see if that would help, but it did not. I dont know how to do an exception:(

good thing I know how to google http://esupport.trendmicro.com.au/en-us/home/pages/technical-support/1059964.aspx

I thought it was an exceptions list in Thunderbird. I already called Trend and they walked through a bunch of things and we determined that in no way was Trend interfering with Thunderbird. I still added these to exceptions. Thanks. Will let you know if it did anything.

Final isolation is to restart in windows safe mode with networking and see how it goes. Just in case there is another program that is at issue. In the US it was their military security token software at one point. In another it was software from a bank that was supposed to enhance security.

There does appear to be more than a fair share of window 8 users report this sort of thing. I would like to really establish what the cause is. but so far there is nothing but "it freezes: or "it is slow" to go on.

Just a thought... do you have file history turned on in windows 8?

before I go safe mode, I want to see if I have the problem still with the changes we made with Trend Exceptions. Was kind of waiting. I dont know what file history in windows is but figured it out. It was turned off, so I have none.

Hey. Still having same problems. Have yet to restart my computer in Safe mode, because I am too busy to do that yet. I restart every 4-5 days. Anyway, will let you know what I come up with. Thanks.

Hi. So, I finally restarted the computer in safe mode and networking. It still seems to be glitchy without the super long no response delays. They are more like 2-5 seconds versus 30-45 seconds and not as often. It is so much more short, that it could be based on emails still downloading or a web page loading. Who knows... Either way, the long no response madness seems to have subsided in Safe Mode. I am not sure if you wanted me to try something else in Safe mode, which I can, but I cannot access important programs, so need to switch back pretty soon. Let me know if this was helpful. Thanks!

Just go back to normal mode. It is simply a diagnostic test, in safe mode you exclude all the third party software and only have Thunderbird Running.

So to something more diagnostic but less painful. Microsoft offers a clean boot option, as well as an automated fixit tool that looks to slow and laggy performance, here https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/331796?wa=wsignin1.0

But, I suggest you create the exclusion I mentioned in the beginning for the Thunderbird profile folder because I think that will fix most if not all of your issues.

I didnt try this last fix yet, but the problem seems to be less frequent after I had godaddy refresh AND resync all my data on their end. I know others are having a similar problem and maybe this will help resolve in some cases? Will keep you posted. Thanks

OK. Did the clean boot which did not allow me to shut down trend micro. I did shut that off manually, so only microsoft items were starting up. I am still getting the lengthy stall. I guess that didnt work?

Sorry for two messages, but I did not see a Fix It tool. I have heard of it and googled it and Microsoft says there are 3rd party softwares. Is that correct?

Looks like they do not have an fixit for Windows 8

see https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/mats/slow_windows_performance/en-us?entrypoint=lightbox

What language version of Thunderbird are you using? perhaps we need to try older versions and see if the issue remains.