
What do people use when they get tired of Thunderbird unreliability?
So, closed down Thunderbird last night, same as always.
Started it up this morning to a screen with .. nothing. No messages, no folders, no column headings, nothing.
Tried restarting with no add-ons; no change.
This is not the first time Thunderbird has left me high and dry, but I think it's the last.
So, what do people use if they're fed up with Thunderbird?
I'm happy to pay for something just so long as it works EVERY DAY. Outlook is an option, but Outlook is overkill for what I need.
I just want it to work every day.
Chosen solution
Well, I said I wasn't going to make any more posts BUT I learned that there's a new version of Thunderbird, 78.6.0.
Started Thunderbird, saw the offer to upgrade, did so, and ta-da, everything is back. A new version "fixed" whatever was ailing me.
Which leaves me stumped.
After spending several days of seriously investigating all the email options suggested to me and everything else Google could suggest, I found every one of them annoyed me to some greater or lesser extent, and did so every single time I used them.
So, do I stay with Thunderbird, which occasionally annoys me greatly, or switch to something else which annoys me slightly and continuously ...
At any rate, an upgrade was a solution, to my problem anyway.
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alan.rothenbush said
So, what do people use if they're fed up with Thunderbird?
Post a question with some data, like steps to reproduce the issue and information about frequency, etc, and then work with them to find a solution? Have you done that before today?
AFAICT the only posting you've made is https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1277853 where you never responded.
Thanks for your reply, although it didn't answer the question. Thankfully others (replying offline), did.
If you want more specifics about THIS problem, to reproduce the issue, I simply have to start Thunderbird. That's it. Frequency? Every time. Steps I've taken? Rebooted, rebooted in safe mode, started Thunderbird with no Add-Ons, started Thunderbird with no Add-ons in Windows safe mode, uninstalled and reinstalled, uninstall reboot reinstall. Give up.
As to my previous question, I didn't followup because a hunt of other questions brought the information that the version I was having a problem with was broken, don't even bother hunting down a repair, just wait until it's fixed. And within a week it was. But a couple of months later, it was broken again. It was fixed again, decently quickly, admittedly, but I was without email until it was.
The key is, it's unreliable, for some people anyway, and timely, reliable email is important to me.
alan.rothenbush said
The key is, it's unreliable, for some people anyway, and timely, reliable email is important to me.
But you are prepared to do exactly nothing about it except complain. You want alternatives. I have been looking hard for a long time. There is no such thing as reliable and easy to use is my finding.
But here are a couple of starting points. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=email+clients https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_email_clients https://www.techradar.com/au/best/best-email-clients
My findings about reliability are based on a slowish 8 year old computer with limited ram and a slow hard disk. Many of those with huge ram allocations and lots of fast SSD;s complain about periodic slowdowns. But most by far of the issues I see are actually caused by decisions the user has made, like which system slowing anti virus to install, or vain attempts to place the profile into some sort of cloud storage, streaming backup or onto a slow spinning disk or NAS. None of which is explicitly supported.
But I have to say, from your description you simply do not provide sufficient information in either of your posts to do anything but guess. So I wish you well.
As you will no longer be using Thunderbird would you like to to close your account here so you will not be spammed in the future?
Thank you for taking the time to reply.
How, I must say that when you state
"But you are prepared to do exactly nothing about it except complain"
that's simply not true. I spent more than 4 hours this morning trying all the "usual" suggestions (reboot, reinstall, safe mode, no add-ons, roll back Windows, etc.) in various combinations in a systematic manner, scouring all the message boards and forums for other hints or tricks, all to no avail.
I'm not a novice, having written my first email message well over 30 years ago, and Thunderbird is the only email program I've used in all those years to fail at all. (Although, to be fair, in the early days my emailing was done on a terminal). To fail three times in a year ...
As far as removing my account, could I ask you to wait a few days? I've received a few suggestions for alternate clients, and I'm hopeful a few more people will speak up.
BTW, emClient is currently the most frequently recommended alternative and the free version seems to do everything I want; unsurprising, given my simple needs. (Plus, it solves quite simply a couple of things that always annoyed me about Thunderbird.)
I am not a novice either, having written my first program more than 40 years ago and clearly remember BBS and FIDOnet. That does not make me infallible or easy to get along with.
EMClient might be the most recommended. It is also the product sitting idle on my computer with an expired trial. It is a glossy product, but it failed dismally to live up to expectations. My end analysis was it was not good enough to use if it was free, let alone them asking money for it. I originally went there trying to help emclient users to migrate to Thunderbird. Total vendor lock in.
Now let me ask you something. Who that does not use Thunderbird would be browsing Thunderbird forums looking for disgruntled Thunderbird user looking for a new mail client. Your asking in the wrong place entirely unless you like getting your recommendations from folks that are paid to make them, or others that are a little disgruntled and are looking for something else. Neither of those groups are really who I would be relying on for email product advice. But I am sure having people recommend something makes you feel better.
My leading choice at the moment as an alternative is the Bat! But I am having difficult seeing it as 60euro better.
So you have appeared twice in this forum asked for support in a backhanded way and in the previous instance simply abandoned the topic without any notice. So I maintain my position you are doing nothing but complain. Self help is what we all do, but when we reach out to get help you need to offer information, not complaints.
I have seen similar pictures posted here. Normally all that is required is to rebuild the global index. They call it a database, but it is a database of indexes. Sometime they get corrupted. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/rebuilding-global-database
There is even an open bug report for it. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1578539
Now to address your self help issues. role back windows... this is almost certain to cause issues with Thunderbird. This is especially so now that profile folders are not backwards compatible. I suggest you forget the option is available. If you have recuva, stop using it as well.
Reinstall.. While it works for windows applications that have everything stored in the windows registry Thunderbird as a cross platform package has the bare minimum in the registry and as such, other that some operating system integration issues, a reinstall does nothing but waste time.
The corruption issue are usually, but not always, caused by anti virus product scanning files while in use. Creating a exemption for the Thunderbird profile for on access scanning is recommended.
Thunderbird profile is not conducive to storage anywhere but on the local hard disk. Nor is having it as part of a streaming backup a good idea. ALL of these things cause file contention issues that Thunderbird does not cope well with.
I have worked in IT support until about 15 years ago and I can tell you all sorts of horror stories about email store corruption in a load of different clients. Nothing is safe be assured of that. If you have had three failures in a year, my guess is you have something other than Thunderbird to thank. But we will never know as you did not ask for assistance, nor offer diagnostic information. Nor try and fix issues in the more likely probably cause products.
Again, let me thank you for another, even more detailed reply.
I would like to address a couple of your points, and then this will be my last post. I will however, carefully read any reply you might have.
. I have in fact asked for assistance once, in January, and was advised by a flood of messages to not bother pursuing it as "the version was broken" and I needed to just wait for a fix, which came decently quickly.
. I agree, asking this forum "what else to use" seems counterproductive. But I have also gotten a few messages telling me "don't use this, and here's why", so it seems to me to be worth the time.
. I'm not clear as to what problems you had with emClient (see above), but my needs are very simple; read messages, create text messages and send them, do so every day. I don't need calendar, to do lists, multiple accounts, an HTML editor, or anything else. Frankly, if I could find a Unix server somewhere, I'd still be using ELM.
So far, emClient does two of the three nicely. The third .. every day .. time will tell.
. my Thunderbird profile was stored on the C drive of my local machine. I wouldn't trust my local file server for such a task, no chance I'd trust a cloud server.
. my AV is instructed to ignore my profile folder, having been bitten by this some years ago
. I'm aware of the corrupted database issue (and disturbed by it) and attempted a database rebuild. But after 10 minutes or so of intense disk activity before settling down to an occasional blip, still a white screen
. I'm aware of the issues involved in rolling back Windows to "undo" an update, but as Thunderbird was still broken after attempting the "usual" fixes, it didn't seem as if I could make things worse
. I'm aware of (and annoyed by) the issues around rolling Thunderbird back, having started from scratch several times in the past couple of years. However, I noted (from Program Manager) that there was a Thunderbird install yesterday, which was also the last day that it worked. Since I didn't install it manually, I assumed it was an automatic update that may have failed in some manner, hence the reinstall attempts
That's it, thank you again and feel free to remove my account immediately. I'd do it myself, but there's not an obvious way to do so.
not sure whats happening inside your computer , but these could be one of the reason, try to address/fix accordingly:
AV = Anti-Virus . FW = Firewall . SS = Security Software software . TB = Thunderbird.
an AV/FW/SS software is checking/scanning all files for malware, so MAY-BE your email folders contains 1 or emails that potential-malware or malware, and AV/FW/SS is trying to quarantine the file, but TB is also trying to load some last emails from that same file , so there may be such race condition , & TB may/can fail/crash in such condition. make backup of all TB-profiles from here: "%APPDATA\Thunderbird\Profiles\%" that is usually here: "C:\Users\<WindowsUserName>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\" run Windows-Explorer , make a folder called "BACKUP" in your "Desktop". in Explorer, goto "%APPDATA\Thunderbird\Profiles\%" disable AV/FW/SS software , and do not run any file/programs , except make a backup-copy of all items inside the "%APPDATA\Thunderbird\Profiles\%" folder. copy all items inside that fodler, into "BACKUP". do not yet enable AV/FW/SS software.
run Thunderbird in "Safe-Mode" , see this page to find what specific BUTTONS you have to press to go into Safe-Mode : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/safe-mode-thunderbird that will disable all TB addons/extensions temporarily. Do not click on any emails when AV/FW/SS is off/disabled. we are running TB to reduce potential conflicting reasons/elements , not to view any email.
if TB can run , then the problem is with one of the Addon/Extensions , so you have to disable ALL addons first, Restart TB normally , and enable addon only one at a time , exit TB & start TB , to find out when TB crashes , and disable/fix the problematic addon.
so if Addon/Extension was the reason of crashing , in that case DO NOT FOLLOW BELOW "COMPACT-FOLDER" steps: Next step will REMOVE/ERASE hidden & unnecessary copy of emails , which may have the potential-malware or malware infected email or HIDDEN email , and you will not be able to get that email back from local computer, ( unless you made a backup of TB Profiles, as described earlier , and unless your remote mail-server has that/those email ). select one by one each of your mail-account , and do this: TB main-menu > File > "Compact Folders". do above also on "Local Folders". when compacting is done, exit from Thunderbird.
enable AV/FW/SS software. wait 1 minute.
run TB normally, & let us know what happens.
if TB can run normally w/o crashing , then conflicting email/data is removed successfully.
if TB cannot run normally, then conflict/problem still exists , but at this point/stage we atleast know that its not any addon/extension.
step by step, you have to eliminate suspect from your virtual LIST of suspect, to find out what exact suspect/problem is causing the crash.
Chosen Solution
Well, I said I wasn't going to make any more posts BUT I learned that there's a new version of Thunderbird, 78.6.0.
Started Thunderbird, saw the offer to upgrade, did so, and ta-da, everything is back. A new version "fixed" whatever was ailing me.
Which leaves me stumped.
After spending several days of seriously investigating all the email options suggested to me and everything else Google could suggest, I found every one of them annoyed me to some greater or lesser extent, and did so every single time I used them.
So, do I stay with Thunderbird, which occasionally annoys me greatly, or switch to something else which annoys me slightly and continuously ...
At any rate, an upgrade was a solution, to my problem anyway.