Avatar for Username

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

This thread was archived. Please ask a new question if you need help.

Hangs when inbox is opened. When I click the Inbox, email list appears but when I click email I see 'not responding' and freezes. (Windows Defender?)

  • 4 replies
  • 4 have this problem
  • 1 view
  • Last reply by LynneLamb

LynneLamb
LynneLamb
more options

When I click the Inbox, the email list appears but when I click any email, the program says 'not responding' and freezes. I can open the draft and sent folders before trying the inbox and that seems to be ok, but when I then try to open the inbox (I see the list of emais) but then attempt to open an email, it crashes. I have a lot of emails in the inbox but clicking the Compact option also freezes the system. I have reverted to an earlier version to a date prior to the issue (started 2 days ago) with Carbonite (no change), I have removed or disabled all addons. The inbox seems to be OK in SAFE mode in that the email in the inbox opens and does not freeze the system.

When I click the Inbox, the email list appears but when I click any email, the program says 'not responding' and freezes. I can open the draft and sent folders before trying the inbox and that seems to be ok, but when I then try to open the inbox (I see the list of emais) but then attempt to open an email, it crashes. I have a lot of emails in the inbox but clicking the Compact option also freezes the system. I have reverted to an earlier version to a date prior to the issue (started 2 days ago) with Carbonite (no change), I have removed or disabled all addons. The inbox seems to be OK in SAFE mode in that the email in the inbox opens and does not freeze the system.

Modified by Wayne Mery

All Replies (4)

Matt
Matt
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

So what is not running in safe mode that is in normal mode. In Thunderbird safe mode that is mainly add-ons. With Windows safe mode it often points to an over zealous anti virus locking the large file that contains the mail, so the program freezes.

LynneLamb
LynneLamb Question owner
more options

I will turn off Defender and restart the computer and try again. I have no other anti-virus program installed. It is late in the day so will try in the morning and get back. Thanks for responding. Lynne

Wayne Mery
Wayne Mery
  • Moderator
  • Top 10 Contributor
more options

Great. Please do post your results

LynneLamb
LynneLamb Question owner
more options

OK. Fixed. I could see that I could open email that was in Sent or Drafts or Archives, but when I attempted this in Inbox, the system froze. I went to Safe mode and moved all the 2014 into Archive2014, all the 2015 emails into Archive2015 and all the 2016 emails into Archive2016. I had to limit the emails to about 3000 for each move so did this in segments. There had been about 55K emails in the Inbox.

The Inbox was now showing nothing, but when I went to the profile (go to Users/name/App/Roaming/Thunderbird/profiles), then the Mail folder, the Inbox folder still had a large size (this must have been the reason for the glitch. I have no idea what was in it but I was not too concerned as the emails had been moved out). I renamed the Inbox to InboxBROKEN.

Then I closed Thunderbird and restarted the computer normally. Thunderbird created a new empty Inbox all by itself. At this point, it was a relief to see that I could download new emails to the new Inbox and everything worked fine. I will go to Archive2016 and do what I need to do to reply, save or delete those emails as I would normally.

This was probably a primitive workaround to a problem that an expert would have been able to solve by fixing the fault in the Inbox, but emptying it out by moving the emails to Archives, deactivating the old Inbox by renaming it, and letting a new Inbox be created solved it for me.