It's been nearly three months and I've not received any suggestions as to how to fix this. In the meantime I've managed to update to 38.4.0, but that didn't help. I've deleted popstate.dat and *.msf files until I'm blue in the face. I tried setting up an alternate profile. I've prayed to all the current gods and a few of the olden ones. No dice. Thunderbird is still stuck on one e-mail from back in August; nothing will download past that one e-mail. In the past, I was sometimes able to help things along by deleting the offending e-mail from the server. This one's been deleted and yet the damned thing keeps appearing out of thin air--from whence, I do not know. At this point, I'm pretty much ready to throw in the towel and go with another e-mail program. I can't keep going with the ATT front end for YAHOO any longer. It's too buggy and clumsy. Any thoughts or should I just move on?

I think you did everything one could do in such a case, first deleting the offending message on the server via webmail, and second deleting popstate.dat.

If this didn't work, are you certain you did delete the correct popstate.dat file? Is there more than one profile?

Also see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Popstate.dat#Deleting_popstate.dat

I deleted all the *.msf and popstate.dat files I could find in both profiles. I am assuming that the profile that comes up when I tag Help/Troubleshooting Information is the current one. Are there more files I'm supposed to be looking for? This has gone on a loooooong time and I'm getting tired. It's tedious going through all these arcane steps, only to have the same e-mail pop up over and over. (And multiple problem files since this past spring--although I was able to get the rest of the problems solved.) As I write this, Thunderbird is already on its fourth download of the stupid thing. It's like something from a horror movie where the bad guy refuses to die. The annoying thing is that the attachment isn't really all that big--2.6MB. The first problem file was over 6MB and I managed to knock that one out.

what anti virus are you using? there are known issues with Norton causing multiple downloads of the same email, but disabling their email scanner to complete the download should fix that.

Microsoft Security Essentials...and yes, I've tried turning it off.

Try to start *Windows* in safe mode with networking enabled. - Win10 http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/change-startup-settings-in-windows-10#v1h=tab01 - Win8 http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/windows-startup-settings-including-safe-mode - Win7 http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Start-your-computer-in-safe-mode

Still in Windows safe mode, start Thunderbird in safe mode. - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/safe-mode

Does the problem go away?

Starting Windows in safe mode and Thunderbird in safe mode did not help. I let it download two copies of the e-mail in question to be sure that it wasn't going to start in on the backlog of 'regular' e-mail.

How did you stop it? That might be a part of the problem.

What mail provider? We, including me, are seeing problems with outlook.com. Basically their service is not working as it should.and duplicates are almost constant.

Have you tried logging into your mail providers web mail portal using your browser to delete the message there? Often when a mailbox gets a corrupt message in the server this sort of thing can happen.

How did I stop what? If you mean previous repeat e-mails, I Googled how to deal with repeat e-mails in Thunderbird and followed the recipes you folks had posted online. In every case, I deleted popstate.dat. Sometimes *.msf files. In every case, I had to make multiple attempts to get it to stick, but eventually succeeded...until this time. At least twice, I had to delete the problem e-mail at the server end and do without. Other times, I got by without having to do so. The didn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to it that I could tell.

As I indicated previously, I'm using the ATT front end for YAHOO's e-mail. It was ATT directly, then they did some sort of much-ballyhooed deal with YAHOO, but the mail webpage still says ATT (and the software's as buggy as ever). For what it's worth, I've got Outlook at work and have never had any problems there, but I'm not using Outlook at home, which is where the problem is--just Thunderbird for years, then ATT's web access when I started having trouble with Thunderbird this past spring.

Again, as said before, I have logged on via ATT/YAHOO's web access and deleted the message there. That was two months ago or more. Yet I'm still getting the e-mail over and over and over.

Please re-read the above. As far as I can tell, the answers to most, if not all of your questions have already been covered.

I don't know if it matters, but the first time I had trouble, the attachments were pictures (JPG?--don't remember). The current problem attachment is a PDF. There doesn't seem to be a consistent file format--just size. And even that is open to question, as there have been attachments that downloaded successfully that I would have thought were big enough to trigger the problem if it was solely size-related. The whole thing is awash in ambiguities--pretty frustrating.

SO deleting the popstate.dat does not fix it, not does deleting the email from the mail server. So where do you think this phantom email is coming from? Thunderbird can not just make up a mail from nothing and you have already deleted it at the source.

The only thing I can think of is an anti virus program or other security program making a mess of the connection. Or some form of malware infection. The only other posability is your Thunderbird mail store is fundamentally corrupted. Right clicking the folder and select compact will clear corruption (with the attendant loss of many apparently present mails usually.

Originally, I'd kept a copy of the e-mail and deleted all subsequent copies. It occurred to me that there might be a possibility that Thunderbird was somehow picking up the e-mail that I'd already received. Deleted that copy. It's still coming in.

I've never studied how e-mail is delivered. I used to code--my native language was P/L-1; did a little FORTRAN and COBOL (plus some of the statistical packages: SPSS, etc., but that's not relevant here), all of which goes back a ways...then on through BASIC, Pascal, C (but not ++), and even Assembler for a short while. I lost interest back when OS-2 and Windows were duking it out for supremacy on PCs and haven't got the time or interest to try to get up to speed on whatever's current. As to where the confounded e-mail is coming from...I have no hypothesis.

As mentioned above, I've got Microsoft Security Essentials on this PC. I've tried turning it off, but that doesn't help.

I've tried compacting. No change.

I was never able to determine for sure whether deleting popstate.dat did anything or not. Clearly, there were times when deleting it did nothing. Other times, I deleted it and the problem cleared up, but that's not necessarily a causal relation.

ok, based on what you call the "not relevant here" I will assume 1. you are not frightened of text files and 2. that a batch file will not be an issue.

Thunderbird stores mail is what is refered to a Berkly Mbox files. they a simple plain text files which store each email in it's native text form one after the other, basically in the order received. Each mbox file (with no file extension) is paired with an MSF file which is the index of the mail.

Encourage you to look at the source file for the folder with the MSF file and actually see what is there. I doubt it wil be very illuminating, but It is something I would do. Just to satisfy myself the software was reflecting the data.

Then I suggest you log the download. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/MailNews:Logging

The log goes close to what is happening over the wire, not at the level of wireshark, but it will show the thunderbird state and the actual conversation with the server. Once you have a log post it here, of email it to me, if you feel it is to large or private.

was never able to determine for sure whether deleting popstate.dat did anything or not.

if your setting is to delete mail on download your popstate.dat file will be very small and really unlikely to be a problem.

You're talking about dusting off some very, very dusty brain cells, but I'll give it a whirl.

I looked at the Inbox file. I saw some Mozilla header stuff, but nothing that looked like an obvious EOF marker. Is that normal?

The batch file instructions would have made more sense to me 20-25 years ago and if I knew more about how e-mail works. The coding I was doing last was to determine values for electronic filters and such, no online work at all--"Lawsy me! I don't know nothin' 'bout birthin' no baby!" That said, I changed IMAP to POP3, that being a term I recognize from setting up my e-mail, and started the thing. I let it run long enough that two copies of the bad e-mail downloaded, in hopes of capturing a beginning, middle, and end, then stopped Thunderbird.

The resulting file was 12.6MB. I attempted to upload it as an "image" using the button below, but after 2 1/2 hours (and with no progress bar to gauge how things were going), I gave up.

And, yes, I've got Thunderbird set to delete mail, so that may factor in as to why deleting popstate.dat didn't seem to help--or at least, not consistently.

I will be out of touch for the next couple of days. Give me some idea as to how to get the file to you or perhaps reduce it in size and I'll try again.

Email it to Matt. It is not an image.

I'll need an address.

If my profile is set like I think it is the address is here https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/user/MattAuSupport

If it is not I would appreciate that information as well :)