Interrupted compaction, ntsmp files that will not go away
I recently had a slew of BSODs on Win7 and ended up with some extraneous files in Thunderbird including multiple ntsmp and popstate.dat folders.
I followed instructions on closing TB and deleting the files from Windows explorer. Now I have multiple copies of ntsmp folders in both the regular folder list and in Trash. I also now have a popstate.dat file, too.
My current status is that the email works fine except that I cannot get my old Mozilla support sign in to work. I have asked mulitple times for password and username resets but I never get the emails from Mozilla! I had to create a new ID to get support.
Please help! Thanks
Chosen solution
popstate.dat files hold the "state" of messages help on the server for a pop mail account. For an account where mail is routinely deleted removing the file has basically no impact. IF you still have 20,000 messages on the server in the inbox, removing it will cause them all to download over again. Renaming has exactly the same impact as deleting a file though. So you have already sean what will happen with it deleted.
This time I think there are other files to delete. panacea.dat. and xulstore.json. Just make sure Thunderbird is not running when you delete them.
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In case I was unclear, email now works ok but I still cannot get rid of those files. It all started when compaction was interrupted by a BSOD.
first, I suggest you check the integrity of the file system.
Use the windows file manager to locate the C: drive, right click and use the tools tab to check for errors.
It is highly probably that your disk has errors. It is also probably the files being accessed at the time contain the errors. so first you need to fix any errors in the file system. Fixing those might fix everything, but it could see data lost from those files.
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the input. I ran Chkdsk and got nothing. No bad sectors. The only thing that was done was: "Cleaning up 694 unused index entries from index $SII of file 0x9.".
What now?
now try deleting the NSTMP folder in Thunderbird again.
BTW, you do not get chkdsk to clean an index unless there was a problem, regardless of what it reported. What it is saying is that there was an issue with the Security descriptors for th volume as that index is linked to that part of the NTFS file system. now you might be able to delete the files, now the cross referencing is fixed.
That did it!! I first tried deleting via Windows Explorer but that didn't work. But deleting them in TB via the right click menu did work. I still have the popstate.dat file. I renamed the extension to .dab and restarted but it had no effect. Cool to delete that, too?
THANKS!
Chosen Solution
popstate.dat files hold the "state" of messages help on the server for a pop mail account. For an account where mail is routinely deleted removing the file has basically no impact. IF you still have 20,000 messages on the server in the inbox, removing it will cause them all to download over again. Renaming has exactly the same impact as deleting a file though. So you have already sean what will happen with it deleted.
This time I think there are other files to delete. panacea.dat. and xulstore.json. Just make sure Thunderbird is not running when you delete them.
Thanks again, Matt!!