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t'bird is frozen; repeats of emails (90000) ; can't access account settings

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  • Last reply by Thanksyou

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My t'bird froze after sorting by "correspondent," and it does not respond to the menu "view--> sort by" command. In fact, it doesn't respond to any commands. The underlying problem may be that it seems to have been retrieving verizon.net mail (from AOL) too frequently; it now has 20+ copies of some emails, and about 90,000 total. (I had it on AOL's POP3 settings, which worked fine until this multiplication started happening a few weeks ago.) AOL says to go to "tools-->account settings" and delete and re-add the verizon account. I cannot go to "tools-->account settings" due to the freeze. Is there a remedy within my existing T'bird? If not can I delete the program and reinstall another from the Mozilla website - - without losing my verizon.net email account at AOL? Alternately, could it be that I installed a new subscription to McAfee yesterday? (I was already up to 80,000 emails by then.) Thank you very much.

My t'bird froze after sorting by "correspondent," and it does not respond to the menu "view--> sort by" command. In fact, it doesn't respond to any commands. The underlying problem may be that it seems to have been retrieving verizon.net mail (from AOL) too frequently; it now has 20+ copies of some emails, and about 90,000 total. (I had it on AOL's POP3 settings, which worked fine until this multiplication started happening a few weeks ago.) AOL says to go to "tools-->account settings" and delete and re-add the verizon account. I cannot go to "tools-->account settings" due to the freeze. Is there a remedy within my existing T'bird? If not can I delete the program and reinstall another from the Mozilla website - - without losing my verizon.net email account at AOL? Alternately, could it be that I installed a new subscription to McAfee yesterday? (I was already up to 80,000 emails by then.) Thank you very much.

Chosen solution

I would suggest you completely disable McAfee and see if things miraculously improve. I would not be at all surprised given the issues McAfee have caused over the last 5 years.

Under no circumstances do what AOL told you. There is a very significant chance you will loose access to your existing email if you do. IF you access your email on POP from a folder names after your email address loss is almost guaranteed.

I suggest you try the following to get control of your computer and mail.

Restart the operating system in safe mode with Networking. This loads only the very basics needed to start your computer while enabling an Internet connection. Click on your operating system for instructions on how to start in safe mode: Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, OSX

If safe mode for the operating system fixes the issue, there's other software in your computer that's causing problems. Possibilities include but not limited to: AV scanning, virus/malware, background downloads such as program updates.
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Chosen Solution

I would suggest you completely disable McAfee and see if things miraculously improve. I would not be at all surprised given the issues McAfee have caused over the last 5 years.

Under no circumstances do what AOL told you. There is a very significant chance you will loose access to your existing email if you do. IF you access your email on POP from a folder names after your email address loss is almost guaranteed.

I suggest you try the following to get control of your computer and mail.

Restart the operating system in safe mode with Networking. This loads only the very basics needed to start your computer while enabling an Internet connection. Click on your operating system for instructions on how to start in safe mode: Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, OSX

If safe mode for the operating system fixes the issue, there's other software in your computer that's causing problems. Possibilities include but not limited to: AV scanning, virus/malware, background downloads such as program updates.
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Matt's concise and extensive reply was extremely helpful. Thank you Matt! After hearing from you, I realized this was beyond my abilities, and I needed to call in my computer shop. Turns out they have seen the same problem with other customers since AOL put Verizon's accounts on to its platform last fall. They surmise that POP's technique of deleting a mail from the server after it is deleted on the device doesn't work at AOL; instead, deletion of an email on a device might be causing the server to re-send it. I have to say that my own experience didn't fully corroborate this, but between Matt and my computer shop I feel confident there's a good solution. Thank you so very much Matt!