Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Thunderbird is tying up my CPU for the past 24 hours

  • 4 replies
  • 3 have this problem
  • 9 views
  • Last reply by omgitsraven

more options

Yesterday, I deleted all my MSF files to try and fix a bug. (It didn't work, but that's a matter for another thread.) Ever since then, Thunderbird has been continuously tying up an entire core of my PC (13% CPU usage in Task Manager, the highest I've ever seen a single program get) which has my PC's fan blaring constantly.

I assume it's re-building a search index, which is fair enough -- but where can I view any kind of log or progress meter to indicate how much longer this is supposed to take? I've only got about 50,000 messages; I don't remember it taking this long when I installed Thunderbird in the first place, I think it was only a few hours...

Also, is there any way for me to put a cap on how much CPU power Thunderbird uses for whatever it's doing right now, just so I can get my CPU fan to stop making so much noise, even if it means it'll take longer to finish?

(For that matter, can I just turn off the index altogether? Or maybe set it to only index the most recent 100 messages for each account, or something? I usually use the full 'search messages' feature rather than 'filter messages' if I'm looking for something older anyway -- do they both use whatever index Thunderbird is presumably spending all this time building?)

Also -- is it safe to close Thunderbird while it's busy doing whatever it's doing? Will the indexing be able to pick up where it left off or is it going to try to start from zero every time I open it?

Yesterday, I deleted all my MSF files to try and fix a bug. (It didn't work, but that's a matter for another thread.) Ever since then, Thunderbird has been continuously tying up an entire core of my PC (13% CPU usage in Task Manager, the highest I've ever seen a single program get) which has my PC's fan blaring constantly. I assume it's re-building a search index, which is fair enough -- but where can I view any kind of log or progress meter to indicate how much longer this is supposed to take? I've only got about 50,000 messages; I don't remember it taking this long when I installed Thunderbird in the first place, I think it was only a few hours... Also, is there any way for me to put a cap on how much CPU power Thunderbird uses for whatever it's doing right now, just so I can get my CPU fan to stop making so much noise, even if it means it'll take longer to finish? (For that matter, can I just turn off the index altogether? Or maybe set it to only index the most recent 100 messages for each account, or something? I usually use the full 'search messages' feature rather than 'filter messages' if I'm looking for something older anyway -- do they both use whatever index Thunderbird is presumably spending all this time building?) Also -- is it safe to close Thunderbird while it's busy doing whatever it's doing? Will the indexing be able to pick up where it left off or is it going to try to start from zero every time I open it?

All Replies (4)

more options

You won't find an aggregate progress meter. But you can see activity under Tools, Activity Manager

more options

The activity manager just contains things like "moved message to trash", it doesn't show anything that would explain why Thunderbird is pegging my CPU.

more options

OK some news on this:

I had originally put this in a separate thread because I didn't think it was connected, but this might have much to do with another Thunderbird issue I'm having: my folders keep being deleted and re-downloaded https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1164563

This made me notice that the CPU fan noise only starts the first time I click the sent mail folder (and will continue for entire days after that, until I quit Thunderbird).

more options

Checking in about this:

Updating to 52.2.1 didn't QUITE fix this problem, but it seems to have allowed me to work around it?

After updating to 52.2.1 and verifying that my folders are finally maintained between launches, I decided it should be safe to click the 'sent mail' folders, and let all those messages load in, which they did successfully. However, after loading in all those messages, the same issue occurred: Thunderbird spun up my CPU fan, for over an hour before I finally gave up and closed Thunderbird to see what would happen.

However, after re-launching Thunderbird, my Sent Mail folders are now working fine, and are NOT spinning up my CPU or anything. So it's basically fine, now? The issue is just that, your first time clicking on a Sent Mail folder after updating to 52.2.1, your CPU will remain taken up with...... something?? until the first time you close Thunderbird, and then after relaunching it'll be fine. So that's an easy enough workaround if you know it, and seemingly it won't be bothering me any more. Just posting this here in case anyone else is in this same situation.