Thunderbird has suddenly become strange; e.g. will not switch tabs or activate menus like 'tools'; anyone help?
Starting today when I open TB I am greeted with the home tab (which usually I only see after an upgrade) and I can only get to my inbox by right-clicking on 'inbox' in the left pane and opening it in a new tab, which I also have to click on to see (because the home tab remains visible until I do this). The menus such as 'File', 'Tools' etc open their drop downs, but items do not function, although they are not actually greyed out. Immediate functions like 'Write' do nothing. Actual emails open as usual, but if I click on a different folder in the left pane (as opposed to right clicking and opening in a new tab) nothing appears to happen as I said earlier, but if I move the cursor over the apparently unchanged tab displaying emails, the emails displayed disappear under the cursor - presumably because they are not in the newly chosen folder. I find windows will not uninstall TB in order for me to re-install. I find the uninstall folder in TB has no uninstaller in it. I have manually deleted all the files in the Thunderbird Folder (although windows won't let me delete the folder itself) and re-installed TB from Mozilla, but it behaves exactly the same. What has happened? Thanks.
Chosen solution
Ok, just to say goodbye; realised now that 'safe mode' offers the option to make the 'remove add-ons' more permanent. Now everything has returned to how it was before mayhem began. Incidentally, this may have had something to do with a Mozilla update that integrated a calendar facility with TB, although it did not create problems immediately.
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From https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1079217#answer-771698
From the Accessories on Start menu, Select the system tools Use the disk cleanup tools. No better? Run the disk defragmenter. (it will stop and require a reboot to check the disk for errors and may spend an hour or more checking. So be ready for a long wait, like while you sleep.) locate the desktop shortcut for Thunderbird and edit it to place. -options and -offline after the "target" start Thunderbird.
Hi, thanks Matt. I am back because I realised from one of your postings that TB can be run with command line options. I ran my TB using the -safe-mode switch and then chose not to load add-ons and everything works fine. You may remember that when I start TB from the desktop without command line options, I cannot access much functionality, which means specifically that I cannot choose to disable any add-ons once the programme has started. How can I return to normality, or am I stuck with using a -safe-mode switch? thanks, Joe
Chosen Solution
Ok, just to say goodbye; realised now that 'safe mode' offers the option to make the 'remove add-ons' more permanent. Now everything has returned to how it was before mayhem began. Incidentally, this may have had something to do with a Mozilla update that integrated a calendar facility with TB, although it did not create problems immediately.
I would like to know what add-on was the root cause. Or was it hardware acceleration for graphics which is also turned off by Safe mode.
Note also safe mode can be entered by holding the shift key while you start Thunderbird.