How To: Recover Profile After Crash - Unable to open the folder Inbox because it is in use by some other operation.
I suffered a BSOD on my fully up to date Win10 Pro (v 22H2, build 19045.4474)
Upon rebooting, Thunderbird is failing to open. The error message is:
Unable to open the folder Inbox on xxx@example.com because it is in use by some other operation. Please wait for that operation to finish and then select the folder again.
There is no other process using the Inbox folder. I have rebooted and the error message persists. It looks to me like the more correct message would be that the Inbox or the profile is corrupted.
I see other threads asking how to restore a corrupted profile, but none of the answers are very useful. They all see to be tips on how to restore a backup of the profile at %APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles.
If I had a backup of that folder, I wouldn't need to ask how to recover a Profile after a crash.
If it helps at all, when I opened the Error Console in Thunderbird, I see the following messages:
``` Uncaught Error: Component returned failure code: 0x8055000a [nsIMsgFolder.updateFolder]
updateFolderAndNotifyOnLoad resource:///modules/DBViewWrapper.jsm:88 open resource:///modules/DBViewWrapper.jsm:812 _onSelect chrome://messenger/content/about3Pane.js:2578 handleEvent chrome://messenger/content/about3Pane.js:1597 <anonymous> chrome://messenger/content/about3Pane.js:128 read resource:///modules/LineReader.jsm:60 _actionListResponse resource:///modules/Pop3Client.jsm:1033 _onData resource:///modules/Pop3Client.jsm:356
DBViewWrapper.jsm:88
- Component returned failure code: 0x80550005 [nsIMsgFolder.msgDatabase] ext-mail.js:2555
findNewMessages chrome://messenger/content/parent/ext-mail.js:2555 onFolderIntPropertyChanged chrome://messenger/content/parent/ext-mail.js:2522 _actionHandleMessage resource:///modules/Pop3Client.jsm:1245 _actionRetrResponse resource:///modules/Pop3Client.jsm:1405 read resource:///modules/LineReader.jsm:65 _actionRetrResponse resource:///modules/Pop3Client.jsm:1371 _onData resource:///modules/Pop3Client.jsm:356 AsyncFunctionNext self-hosted:852
- Component returned failure code: 0x80550005 [nsIMsgFolder.msgDatabase] 4 ext-mail.js:2555
```
There must be some tool that validates the Profile independently of Thunderbird.
Modified by Wayne Mery
All Replies (3)
For what it's worth, the problem seems to be isolated to the "Inbox" file or the "Inbox.msf" file.
If I delete those two files from the %APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles\4jkcgthm.default\Mail\mail.notlimited.com folder, Thunderbird starts up just fine. It's missing the 6 years or so of emails that were in the Inbox, but at least it opens and allows me to move forward.
The "Inbox" file seems to be a straight forward concatenation of all of the emails with a "\r\n\r\n\r\nFrom - (?<datetime-retrieved>.*)$"seperator at the top of each message.
I'll write a little program to validate the 46.6GB Inbox file, but I don't think that's the problem.
Although the (misleading and unhelpful) error message indicates the Inbox is opened by another program, evidence indicates that something is wrong with the .msf file. (Or maybe the contents of the Inbox file have exceeded some internal limit, but I suspect that's not the issue.)
Here are the bad and good versions of the two .msf files:
Inbox.msf (good): https://pastebin.com/cjCGXcVu Inbox.msf (bad): https://pastebin.com/vYeR2f5H
Here is a diff between the good and the bad .msf files:
``` 21c21 < <(80=1)(81=0)(82=12a20000)(85=59414)(86=6668f3ca)> --- > <(80=1)(81=0)(82=12a20000)(83=b1bc9a4fc)(84=6668a88c)> 23c23 < [1(^AB=1)(^AC=0)(^AD=1)(^A3^82)(^A0=0)(^A1=0)(^A2^85)(^A4^86)]} --- > [1(^AB=1)(^AC=0)(^AD=1)(^A3^82)(^A0=0)(^A1=0)(^A2^83)(^A4^84)]} ```
mark.moore2 said
For what it's worth, the problem seems to be isolated to the "Inbox" file or the "Inbox.msf" file. If I delete those two files from the %APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles\4jkcgthm.default\Mail\mail.notlimited.com folder, Thunderbird starts up just fine. It's missing the 6 years or so of emails that were in the Inbox, but at least it opens and allows me to move forward. The "Inbox" file seems to be a straight forward concatenation of all of the emails with a "\r\n\r\n\r\nFrom - (?<datetime-retrieved>.*)$"seperator at the top of each message. I'll write a little program to validate the 46.6GB Inbox file, but I don't think that's the problem.
Sounds like you are using pop accounts. The size could definitely be a problem - 46gb is excessive. 10gb would be more reasonable.
You should be archiving messages out of the Inbox after some period of time. Or deleting.
> There is no other process using the Inbox folder.
Actually there must be. That is exactly what is meant by "Unable to open the folder Inbox on xxx@example.com because it is in use by some other operation. Please wait for that operation to finish and then select the folder again."
Reducing Inbox size may help. But the cause is probably antivirus software, the compact process, or multiple pop accounts going to the same Inbox. Are you using a shared Inbox for multiple pop accounts?
You must log in to your account to reply to posts. Please start a new question, if you do not have an account yet.