The Mozilla Crash Reporter sends crash information to a collection system when Thunderbird crashes. Thunderbird developers use this information to make future versions of Thunderbird crash less frequently. (The Mozilla Crash Reporter comes up because Thunderbird crashes; it does not cause Thunderbird to crash.)

For suggestions on how to prevent Thunderbird from crashing, see Thunderbird crashes.

When Thunderbird crashes

After Thunderbird crashes, the Mozilla Crash Reporter window should be displayed. The crash has not been submitted to Mozilla until you click Quit or Restart. And the information in this window is not helpful to developers; to help developers you must submit the crash report. It is also helpful to provide your crash report ID in your postings, and submit a bug report if one does not already exist.

Tell Mozilla about this crash so they can fix it: If this box is checked, the Mozilla Crash Reporter will send crash data to Mozilla. Uncheck this box if you don't want to send the report.

Details...: This opens the "Report Contents" window where you can view some of the details that will be submitted with crash data. However, this information by itself is not useful to developers. You must have "Tell Mozilla ..." checked, and then click Quit or Restart to submit information to developers. Supplying a comment and your email address can also be helpful.

Add a comment: Use this box to provide information to help developers find the cause of the crash. Please write what you were doing when Thunderbird crashed. Note: the comments you provide can be read by anyone.

Allow Mozilla to contact me about this report: Check this box if you are willing to receive emails from Mozilla should they need more information from you about this crash, or have important information for you. Enter your email address in the next field.

Enter your email address here: The email address to be used if you chose above to help our development staff get information and reproduce this crash.

Quit Thunderbird: Close the dialog and don't start Thunderbird.

Restart Thunderbird: Close the dialog and start Thunderbird.

Viewing crash reports

Skip to Viewing reports outside of Thunderbird if you can't start Thunderbird. If you can start Thunderbird, to view your crash reports :

1. Install the ViewAbout add-on into Thunderbird, and restart.In Thunderbird, open the Troubleshooting Information's tab from the Help menu.
2. Select View | ViewAbout | about:crashes.Click on the about:crashes link inside the Application Basics section.
3. Crashes are listed by date and time. If a crash successfully submitted to the crash database, the crash report ID is shown, starting with the characters "bp-". In the screenshot below, the report ID is "bp-24b627a1-1416-4c09-a4ab-d7f502100331".

   

4. You can click on a report ID to view the report. The report will also list related bug reports. If you wish, you can click on the bug number and offer additional information about your crash in the bug report. If no bug reports are listed, please create one by clicking "Report this Crash".
5. If you are receiving help in a bug or support forum, please give them your crash report ID(s) as a text string, not a screen shot.

If you don't get a crash report, see If you don't get a crash report described later in this article.

Viewing reports outside of Thunderbird

You can find crash information in the Crash Reports folder on your computer without starting Thunderbird. The folder contains two subfolders, pending and submitted. submitted contains reports that have been submitted to and received by the crash report database. Each file represents one report. pending contains files that have not been received by the crash report database. There are two files for each crash, one is the crash dump, and one is the crash details.

File names in the submitted folder contain crash IDs and these IDs are what a developer may request when investigating a problem related to your crash. The crash report ID is the portion of the file name without the file extension.

Windows Vista/Windows 7

1. Open the Windows Start menu.
2. In the Start Search box, type %APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Crash Reports\submitted\ and press Enter.

Windows 2000/XP

1. Open the Windows Start menu, then choose Run....
2. In the Run dialog, type %APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Crash Reports\submitted\ and press Enter.

Mac OS X Crash reports are stored in ~/Library/Thunderbird/Crash Reports/submitted/

Linux Crash reports are stored in ~/.thunderbird/Crash Reports/submitted/

If you don't get a crash report

If you don't get a crash report either because crash reporter failed or it doesn't work with your OS or distribution, you can get a stacktrace by using How to get a stacktrace for a bug report.