Email message highlighting has become sporadic
I run Thunderbird on both my office computer and my home laptop. Both run Windows 7. My office version of T-Bird is 60.9.1 but I am unsure of my home machine (because I don't have it here) which is where the problem has started occurring. When I am in my newly downloaded messages page, I can click on one or more messages or use the standard Windows commands to click on the first and then scroll down and use the shift key to highlight all messages between clicks. Then a single press of the J key sends them all to the Junk folder. Or I can use CTRL click to select specific messages in the list. This still works at the office but on the laptop it has a mind of its own. Sometimes it works just fine as described above. But more often, I can highlight the first message and when I try and use SHIFT (or CTRL) click to select the group, instead it opens an entire row of tabs across the top, one for each message, requiring me to close them one at a time until they are all gone. Sometimes this might be 20 clicks or more. Once they are closed, the display shifts from full screen down to the restore down image and I have to click the maximize icon as well. But the message listing does now show the selected messages in blue and I can send them all to Junk or just delete them all at one time. These problems have more than tripled the time it takes me to weed out unnecessary emails and get on with my work. Any idea if this is a Thunderbird issue or possibly a Windows problem?
All Replies (5)
Just a guess, but have you replaced the battery in your mouse and keyboard lately?
From your selection to Junk is pressing Ctrl+J or pressing enter to open them all. That sounds like a flat keyboard battery to me.
Thanks, Matt, But the problem machine is a Toshiba laptop. Only has the built in keyboard, no battery specific to it that I know of. The mouse IS wireless, I hate the touchpad, but when its battery dies, it just stops working entirely.
I have noticed one other peculiarity recently. If I am in Firefox, just browsing down a list of articles in Yahoo News for instance, often times all the photos on the page will change to a blue overscreen. You can still see the photo beneath it, but every pic will have a light blue box over it. Refreshing the page will restore the original color images. Then 10 minutes later, it will refresh with the blue. Aggravating.
Steve
what you are describing is the images being "selected" so I really think there is something wrong with your keyboard (sticky CTRL or shift keys perhaps. Or the mouse. That would be the easiest to test with another mouse.
Hi Matt, You were right on the money. As impossible as it seemed to me, something has gone nuts in my wireless USB mouse setup. Swapping a tethered on seems to have stopped all the anomalies. I have ordered a replacement wireless rodent and assume all will be as it should soon. Thank you for your help. Steve
From my gamer son in law I am told that they use exclusively wired keyboards and mice as the wireless ones suffer lag if used quickly. In gaming it get you killed, but if you are a good, or particularly fast two finger, typist apparently you can see it in general office application, it is just a screen update delay. Given the proliferation of USB devices speakers, hard disks etc sometimes the bandwidth can simply become saturated on the USB bus. I have not personally sen it for some years now, and at that time it was a USB network connection on a device that lacked a free network connection port. When tHe network was busy printing the mouse acted funny and sluggish.