I had to fully delete the WhiteBulkBox file on disk, and then repair it, to be able to open it. This worked. So now, at least when email is put into this box, it will not hang the program. Now, I am only encountering timeouts encountered when the server does not handle DELE commands as files are read. This might be due to some issue on my local network, modem, etc. Next step is to try on a different network. I will be traveling so I will be trying this today and will report back.

I have since tried this on another local network and it still is not working. So this eliminates the local networking gear, such as broadband modem, router, etc. There are three remaining places where the problem may be caused: 1. The mail server on my VPS system that is receiving the email. 2. Something in Win10 that changed, or 3. something in Thunderbird itself.

On 1, this may actually be the problem because I had just been wrestling with my hosting service because they migrated my VPS to a new server, and then we had to give up on that because email lists (through mailman) would not work.

On 2, I did not have this problem exactly in synchronization with any update. It surfaced between updates. But the updates occur quickly and if this were the case, then many more people would have this problem, and I haven't seen anyone say that here.

On 3. I upgraded Thunderbird to latest release, in an effort to deal with the problem, so it is unlikely the problem itself.

This is making me suspect #1, my hosting service email as the problem. To eliminate 2 and anything to do with this machine, I am moving my email data to another machine that is not win10 and will hopefully try it there. If it still does not work, then #1 will be the primary focus.

Stay tuned.

Thanks for all the great detail.

The CPU and memory usage you cite for Thunderbird shouldn't result in the problem you describe.

Honestly, 10-30 minutes sounds like something external to Thunderbird. And although the ISP might be involved in delays, it shouldn't result in Thunderbird "not responding".

• Please start *Windows'* in safe mode with networking enabled

win10 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12376/windows-10-start-your-pc-in-safe-mode

• Still in Windows safe mode, start Thunderbird in Troubleshoot mode

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

Does problem go away or change?

Hi, Thanks for the idea. I rebooted in SAFE mode with networking enabled, and I ran Thunderbird in troubleshooting mode. It actually was a lot worse than before, stopping after only 2 emails downloaded, and then it went into "not responding" for over 15 minutes, then responded with the error message captured below, saying that it timed out due to not getting a response to RETR command. Honestly, I Thunderbird should not go into a not-responding mode even if it were waiting for the server, if indeed that is the problem. I rebooted again without being in SAFE mode and I tried it again, and it hung after downloading 17 emails. I did not wait for it to recover.

At this point, I am starting to seriously suspect the server. My hosting service has been in a migration mode for a while now, not of my choosing. They notified me early in the month with less than 8 hours notice that they were going to migrate to a new hardware node, but everything should appear the same to me. At first, everything was fine, but then I started to realize that the email list serve (mailman) was not working correctly. After a week of testing and proving this to the hosting service, they final agreed and we moved back to the old node. In about the same time frame, I started to also have these email problems, but I thought at first it was a Win10 upgrade that seemed to be correlated. But since I have not heard much about it, and a subsequent upgrade has occurred, I am thinking that is unlikely.

My local network can't be the source of the problem because I have tried this using cell modem hotspot and other wifi networks. The problem did not change at all.

I tried copying the entire thunderbird profile, which is about 38GB to another computer and I tried running it using an older version of Thunderbird. That did not work, and I did not feel confident about using it because it is still Win7 based. So I gave up on that test.

I set up a test email account on the server at the address crm@citizensoversight.org, and it seemed to work okay. But it does not have a lot of mail. I may want to try sending it a lot of emails so it has something to work with, to see if the same problem crops up. That may require a email blaster program that will send emails over and over to the same mailbox so it will have enough to work with.

It is important to note that Thunderbird has no problem with getting email from an associated gmail account, nor accounts on a different server, i.e. cox.net. So that also implies that it is related to the server and not Thunderbird. But honestly, for Thunderbird to go into never-never land for 15 minutes is pretty ridiculous, but perhaps it is a function of the driver you are using, and with windows not being good with drivers sometimes, perhaps that is the reason.

Please let me know if you have any other ideas!

--Ray

38gb is a very large profile.

How many pop accounts? Do you have them set to keep messages on the server? Have you seen https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1026836

GOOD NEWS...

I was thinking about why it is that Thunderbird hangs... and then the server eventually times out. Well, I turned off all junk mail processing and it helped a lot. So I investigated and deleted all junk mail. I think this folder was corrupted or maybe just too large for Thunderbird to deal with. I was under the impression that it was advised to leave junk mail in the folder so the algorithm could use that mail to determine whether any mail was junk or not.

So I am now successfully downloading all the backed up email and I set it to once again delete from the server after downloading. Many of the emails are administrative alerts that track possible server intrusions, for example. lfd. I think it is linux firewall deamon.

Since I have your attention, do you happen to know if junk should be deleted or not? I think it would be best to just regularly delete it, but allow the review of recent junk to see if there is any nonjunk there, so I can avoid this problem in the future.

Once I get this stabilized, I will experiment with turning junk mail processing back on.

--Ray

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/thunderbird-and-junk-spam-messages#w_training-the-junk-filter details the proper usages. And having a large Junk/Spam folder is actually a pain point listed in https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing:Memory_Usage_Problems - number 26.

No, you shouldn't keep those messages. How big or how many message was in the folder?

bestoflutz,

How big or how many message was in the folder?

Not sure how big it was now, but it definitely was the problem and it entirely makes sense. When junk mail was detected, it attempted to add it to the folder, and that is when it would hang. I see now the profile is 33.6GB instead of 38gb, so all my cleanup got rid of over 4gb of crud. I'm not sure why I turned off the auto-delete functionality for the junk mail folder, which was set to 500 messages, but had grown to many thousands.

Thunderbird has stabilized again, and boy am I happy now! There was also a poison pill email in the WhiteBulkBox. I had to get rid of all those.

Thank you for your kind assistance. I hope this is helpful to anyone else who might have a similar problem. It's good to know that junk mail processing does not need any messages in the junk mail folder.

--Ray