What is your anti-virus software?

am using windows defender this has not been a problem.

Try to start *Windows* in safe mode with networking enabled.

- Win8 http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows-8/windows-startup-settings-including-safe-mode

- Win7 http://windows.microsoft.com/en-US/windows7/Start-your-computer-in-safe-mode

- XP http://www.microsoft.com/resources/documentation/windows/xp/all/proddocs/en-us/boot_failsafe.mspx

Still in Windows safe mode, start Thunderbird in safe mode.

- https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/safe-mode

Does the problem go away?

It seemed to work but I didn't wait for a couple of hours to get more emails.

I set it up to boot to safe mode with networking and opened TB. I had 39 emails and it didn't lock up. What next?

Tell your anti-virus software not to scan the Thunderbird profile folder. http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/protect/wiki/protect_defender-protect_scanning/how-to-exclude-a-filefolder-from-windows-defender/f32ee18f-a012-4f02-8611-0737570e8eee

I did thew windows defender thing and it is still saying n"not responding"

I did thew windows defender thing

Not very specific. What exactly did you do?

I put thunderbird into the exclusions section of defender. It didn't work.

I put thunderbird into the exclusions section of defender.

What is the exact path you did exclude? Not sure why it's that hard to be precise.

C:/program files/mozilla thunderbird/thunderbird.exe I follow the instructions that were given above. Nothing exacting there. So if you don't like my replys then give more exacting instructions

The data (your messages) are stored in your profile, and this is the area you need to exclude from the AV scanning. You have chosen the Thunderbird program itself, which is separate from the message data.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-tb

The easiest way to find your Thunderbird profile is to open Help|Troubleshooting Information in Thunderbird, and click the button labelled "Show folder", next to "Profile Folder". This will open to the profile location in your file manager.

Look I said that before the ssd problem it was working fine. I don't think windows defender is the problem, yet that is where everyone is going.

What do you think the problem is then?

Works fine in Windows safe mode, so Thunderbird does not have a bug or other issue. What it does say is that something that is loaded normally that is not loaded in safe mode is the issue. Do you have other security software, password vaults or disk or memory optimizers that might be the issue.

Perhaps you could try a "clean boot" https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/929135?wa=wsignin1.0

Then re enable the programs/services one at a time until you work out what is the root cause of the issue