Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

When I try to attach a file to an email, the program stops and says "Not Responding"

  • 4 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by christ1

more options

When I try to attach a file to an email, the program stops and says "Not Responding". The program stops and all Thunderbird windows seem to be "grayed out". The only way out is to shut down Thunderbird and restart it.

I had AVG Antivirus and Malwarbytes running but I shut them down. I am still having the problem

Ron Meyer

When I try to attach a file to an email, the program stops and says "Not Responding". The program stops and all Thunderbird windows seem to be "grayed out". The only way out is to shut down Thunderbird and restart it. I had AVG Antivirus and Malwarbytes running but I shut them down. I am still having the problem Ron Meyer

All Replies (4)

more options

This bug was reported by some other users several years ago, and the following solution was mentioned:

I was able to fix the hang
my mail.compose.attach.dir in prefs.js in the profile was set to a location on a computer that was not on-line. I changed the value using the Thunderbird config editor (Tools -> Options->Advanced -> General to:
mail.compose.attach.dir can be set to C:\Documents and Settings\cw\My Documents
use your user name (mine is cw) in the above setting
And that resolved the hang. :)

Could you please try it and see if it fixes the problem you are experiencing?

Modified by tjohnson

more options

tjohnson2

I did what you requested and went into the config editor and changed the location to c:/Users/Ron/Documents

I opened a new email in Write and selected Attach. Same thing happened, program stop and I had to shut down and reboot Thunderbird

Ron M

PS 5/15/15 am - Noticed a new problem. I received a new email with an attachment. When I tried to open the email, Thunderbird stopped working and I got "Not Responding". Had to close down Thunderbird and reboot it.

Modified by rmeyer23

more options

Sorry to hear about that.

Here are a few things you could try to fix the problem, but I don't know if they'll help:

  • Create a new profile (see Using Multiple Profiles ) and see if the problem still occurs. If not, your old profile is probably corrupted and you can migrate your mail files to the new one.
  • Uninstall/reinstall Thunderbird.
  • Try the beta release of Thunderbird.
more options