Thunderbird not responding while trying to connect to gmail account

Running windows 11 Pro and in the last microsoft update my thunderbird email is not responding at all. It is trying to connect to imap.gmail.com. How can i turn off auto account checking on startup so i can access my email settings to try and fix this? I tried running it in safe mode and i get not responding there too! Can i access a profile folder and turn off auto email checking somehow?