Thunderbird Community Forum

Since yesterday Thunderbird keeps crasing. I don't even have time to go see if an update was added. It crashes within a few seconds all the time. Any ways to fix it?

The 'Sent' file in my 'Mail' folder exceeds 3 GB (3,224,360,399 bytes) and is not being read in the TB Mail window. How can I reduce the size of this file AND save messages???

'Sent' message folder IS searchable!!!

Thunderbird, quite suddenly, stopped getting my email; Both on my account and my wife's account at the same ISP. I spent more than two hours on the phone with the ISPs help line trying to resolve this issue. They also use Thunderbird at their help desk, and the agent I talked to was familiar with your program. She (the agent) was not able to replicate the issue on their system. We then tried to set up a NEW email account. I carefully entered all the info needed for a new account, following instructions from the agent, then hit the 'Test' button. I got the following message onscreen: "THUNDERBIRD FAILED TO FIND SETTINGS FOR YOUR EMAIL ACCOUNT" The answer to the original issue suddenly became very clear - Thunderbird cannot, or refuses to, connect with the email server, therefore NO EMAIL. We tried everything in her toolkit to resolve the problem to no avail. We finally tried UNINSTALLING Thunderbird (and the Maintaince program). Once Uninstalled, I used the Registry Tool on CCleaner to remove any entries in the registry referring to Thunderbird (there were several), then restarted my computer. I then downloaded and installed a totally NEW Thunderbird program. When I ran the Thunderbird again, I found all my account(s) info was still present, and Thunderbird was still unable to find the server. I'm at my wits end trying to resolve this issue, and REALLY HATE to go back to Microsoft OUTLOOK to get my email. Anybody got any ideas??? Any help would be greatly appreciated. (Signed) Proteus

Thunderbird started crashing randomly about 2 days ago, however, after restart, it would remain running if I switched to troubleshooting mode. I removed an add-on from Bitdefender in troubleshooting mode.

Today I can't even open Thunderbird-- it crashes on launch. It won't launch even if I hit the Shift key or if I turn off antivirus.

Here is the most recent submitted crash report:

Crash ID: ⁨bp-b52cd345-636f-445a-ab4c-764ca0250114⁩

Can someone please give me guidance on what is going on and how to fix it?

Thank you.

I have been having much trouble with Thunderbird. The latest problem is with the Sent folder. When I try to Compact Folders I get the message "The folder 'Sent on Local' could not be compacted because writing to folder failed. Verify that you have enough disk space, and that you have write privileges to the file system, then try again."

I have plenty of disk space and have Full Control. I tried creating a temporary folder and moving all the Sent messages to it, so that Sent had zero messages. I still got the same message. The file listing showed Sent to have a size of 182 MB even though it didn't contain any messages. I've tried deleting sent.msf to force Thunderbird to recreate the index - didn't work. I tried using Repair Folder. That worked, but when I tried Compacting Folders again it found another folder with the same problem. I fixed that one and then it said the Sent folder was bad once again. I'm going around in circles!

I've deleted and recreated scores of .msf files for various reasons, trying to get Thunderbird to work without errors, but as soon as I get one problem fixed, another one crops up. I'd conclude that it's my computer, except that I'm not having any problems with other programs.

Any thoughts on this particular problem or Thunderbird problems in general? Thanks.

Start up has been lagging for the last 2 weeks or so. When I open the program I see "no emails found" and the circle of death. I have to wait for 20-30 seconds before my email accounts show up and again while they download. Anyone else having this issue or is it just me?

As of yesterday afternoon 1/8/2025 Thunderbird crashes every time it opens. I tried troubleshooting mode, but it still crashes.

These are the last five crash reports I submitted:

bp-b06aee68-741d-4f5a-8bc4-c15230250109 bp-82e871d5-0479-422f-9ee1-c0d3c0250109 bp-de082294-4c7b-48e4-a20e-db4730250109 bp-993f1d6a-4671-47bf-9d9a-5da6a0250109 bp-6b4de7fd-a602-4632-ae48-961690250109

Please contact me at my alternate email account: tvcrider@gmail.com I suspect that I will not received notices when someone answers this thread. I pretty sure my account is tied to my Thundebird email. Thank you, Joe G

Just upgraded to a new system with Windows 11. Avast Security. Installed Thunderbird 128.5.2esr same as on old system. Migrated old emails using MozBackup. Worked great for a day. New emails, archived a bunch of emails to a local folder...

Next day after about 3-5 minutes Thunderbird shows the Hourglass and is not responding. Eventually will go to a greyed out window. I have to kill it with task manager. I noticed that in Activity Manager three calendars were syncing for a long time. Disabled all calendars.

Task manager shows CPU usage but 0 Network and 0 Disk activity. 3 sub processes but only one has CPU. Resource Manager shows CPU and 72 threads. Resource Manager - Analyze Wait Chain - reports "waiting to finish network I/O."

I've tried Troubleshooting Mode. Still froze during Troubleshooting Mode. I've tried moving a large local folder out of the mail folder entirely. I've tried clearing the startup cache. I've tried clearing the system temp folder.

I have a lot of accounts, saved emails and message filters. So I really don't want to start over again with an empty Thunderbird and reset up accounts.

Hello,

I use Thunderbird 128.5.2esr with xubuntu 24.04.

All of a sudden (I haven't changed anything) thunderbird hangs completely after a few minutes running. The process does not react at all, I have to kill it. Thunderbird process is then stuck on 100% load.

Already testet (with no success):

• Troubleshooting Mode with deactivated Addons
• Disabled Global Indexing (with deleting global-messages-db.sqlite file)
• Waiting for 20min (in case thread/process is running a long time)
• Reboot OS

I have no idea what the issue is. Does anyone have ideas? Thx, Hugo

Hello, I am using Windows 11. I recently installed the latest update 24H2. Since a few days I have the issue that Thunderbird freeses after appr. 3 minutes of use. There is no crash report window popping up. I will be thankful to receive some kind of support. Thank you very much, Holger

I was using Thunderbird for Windows 10 normally for many months. Recently, whenever I launch the app it immediately freezes, and I have to force quit the application. Reinstalling the app does not fix the issue. I haven't tried deleting my profiles yet, but I would like to avoid that if possible.

I've been using Thunderbird for many years, and its up to date. I've had more and more problems with choppy response times lately. It "freezes" for short periods where the interface stops responding for half a minute, or a minute or so before I can do anything. It always comes back (never crashes, shuts down). Today was some of the worst where it was minutes before I could start using it.

My junk and trash folders are empty, and I've done a compression and run the cleanup operation on a bunch of folders. My Inbox is empty. I only have 2 pop accounts. Its not when its retrieving or sending email though.

I've been using Thunderbird for years. I shutdown my computer (MacOS Sequoia) and went away for a few days, and now Thunderbird hangs when I try to use it. I have one main email account which I access with POP, and a couple of other accounts which I access with IMAP. I can access the downloaded messages in the Inbox of the POP account that I downloaded before going away, but I can't read any other folders (I have many folders since I've used Thunderbird for so long), or access the IMAP accounts. Thunderbird shows that I have new mail waiting on the POP server, but it hangs when I try to download them. It does not show mail waiting on the IMAP accounts, although I know new mail is there.

I have tried re-installing Thunderbird, and rebooted the computer, with no change. When Thunderbird hangs, it eats memory until the system runs out, and I have to use Force Quit to terminate it.

It's the first time I've had a problem with it!

A couple of months ago Thunderbird started being very slow in multiple situations. I use POP3 and download all mails. I have fairly big mailboxes, some of them up to 2½ GB.

1) Downloading e-mails is slow.

But the worst is this one:

2) Clicking on unread mails first time. This can easily take 10 secs, where the app goes "not responding" and finally "Loading message...." With 10 new mails, it is a lot of wasted time.

3) Dragging mails from one mailbox to another Some of the same behaviour as above.

I have tried to compact mailboxes, but that doesn't help.

I am on release 128.4.1esr (32-bit), windows 10.

I’m using Thunderbird on a MacBook Air M1 2020 with 103 GB of free disk space and 8 GB memory. I’m using it primarily as a calendar and task management system because I like the reminder options in Thunderbird. I use local calendars. Thunderbird auto-updated to V 128.5.2 from V115.18.0 on 12/17/24 (I didn’t realize auto-update was set) and since then gets hung every time a reminder comes up and I either dismiss it or snooze it. I have to Force Quit Thunderbird to get the spinning beach ball to go away. I backup my computer weekly using Time Machine and tried restoring to 115.8.0, but was unable to restore my profile with my current calendar items on it. I got an error message saying that the new version of my profile (with my local calendars) is incompatible with Thunderbird V 115.8.0. Is there any way to get my current calendar info into an older version of Thunderbird, or better yet, create a fix so that it doesn’t get hung? If it's time for me to move to a different application for this use, just be honest. Thanks in advance for your advice and expertise!

Hello,

For a few days now, my Thunderbird has been reset. It asks me to set up an e-mail account. And all my old accounts and e-mails have disappeared. But the profile folder isn't empty. I've tried a number of solutions on the Internet, but still nothing. Please help me. Thanks

The problem is that the 'Show Folder Size' option gives contents (even when no emails are present) that are too large. The file sizes seem to accumulate each time an email passes through the folder.

This was raised 8 months ago in a thread and the solution was to manually delete files in the Profile folder. This still works (I've just done it this afternoon) although personalised folders have to be deleted and re-made.

Has an easier solution been discovered, yet? Thanks...