That sounds like a failed anti virus mail scanner. that downloading 1 of and never changing.

Restart your computer first just to see if that fixes it. If not disable the mail scanner in your anti virus, reboot to clear any locked up software and then attempt to get mail again.

yes, it downloads all the mail on the server. If the download is slow turn off your anti virus email scanner. That usually speeds things up.

thanks matt, turned entire antivirus off (and has been since I got you message around 6pm last night. still not working. i dont know if its downloading any messages (although there are loads in all folders) but it still keeps starting to download again from 1 every time I turn it on...

and I still cant read my new messages.

did you reboot after you turned off the anti scanner? Note that downloading only occurs while the program is open. SO unless you leave it running it will never download.

okay been a week now. no new emails since 21st so lucky i have my phone. but although i've cleaned up my inbox and got it down to 322 messages, I cant do any more to cull the rest until I can read them. most are not viewing in the preview pane and none will open if double clicked on.

i have now rebooted my PC as suggested and problems seem to be continuing at such a slow rate. its taking about 10-15 seconds per email to "download" it. even tough I've culled or moved lots, it still seems to get up to 1400 emails out of (now 322). so letting it start again...

to be honest, i'm not even sure how to turn off the security settings for email. we're using windows defender. i've looked in control panel and i cant see thunderbird in the list of software to turn the app security off for.

thanks. found the profiles file but mine was o61y65br.default and had a few folders below that called: calendar data, crashes, etensions, imapmail, mail, minidumps, saved-telemetry-pings. none of which contained a .exe or .com file to save the profile.

too hard. got computer tech back today. now running outlook.com thanks

corinne.coombs said

too hard. got computer tech back today. now running outlook.com thanks

Is that because your tech simply has no idea, or they think you don't? Seriously I think the prior. As you have now abandoned a local mail program to use a web page that was there and being used before any of this started.

problem was that my mail had problems transporting across. i was using windows 8 mail client before. i had too many emails in the inbox and tried to sort them before the "actually" were downloaded. i guess it didnt appear obvious that as I could see them in by inbox, i thought they were there and they werent properly. anyway I spend days culling, sorting into folders and the like and it was all wasted in the end as although we had enough RAM in the laptop, we didnt have a fast enough processor to do the job (he told us) so suggested we go web based. thanks for your help tho..