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Thunderbird updated itself and will not restart. Rebooted computer, reinstalled Thunderbird, still won't start. Can send emails though.

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Yesterday I was notified there was an update for Thunderbird. I went ahead and allowed it to install and it seemed to work but then Thunderbird would not reopen. I get an error message that there was a problem (very unhelpful) and the option to report the error (I did, multiple times) and included my email address for replies (although you folks might want to rethink that when it's someone's mail client having problems - makes getting the mail a chore). I tried rebooting my system (Win 7 Pro 32 bit) and still got the error. I came to the help forum and saw advice to delete the "parent.lock" file (did, but it was three years old, so likely not used now?) which did nothing, and to reinstall Thunderbird. I downloaded a fresh copy and tried a reinstall (without removing the old), which seemed to work, but Thunderbird still crashes when I try to open it. I shut down and rebooted into safe mode and it still will not open. My next step will probably be to remove the program and then reinstall it, but I'm concerned about losing my settings and stored emails.

Oh, and if I click on a link to send mail, it does open a write window but seems to have trouble connecting to one mail server while not having trouble send to a different server. Possibly an encryption issue.

tl;dr: updated, now won't open without crashing

Yesterday I was notified there was an update for Thunderbird. I went ahead and allowed it to install and it seemed to work but then Thunderbird would not reopen. I get an error message that there was a problem (very unhelpful) and the option to report the error (I did, multiple times) and included my email address for replies (although you folks might want to rethink that when it's someone's mail client having problems - makes getting the mail a chore). I tried rebooting my system (Win 7 Pro 32 bit) and still got the error. I came to the help forum and saw advice to delete the "parent.lock" file (did, but it was three years old, so likely not used now?) which did nothing, and to reinstall Thunderbird. I downloaded a fresh copy and tried a reinstall (without removing the old), which seemed to work, but Thunderbird still crashes when I try to open it. I shut down and rebooted into safe mode and it still will not open. My next step will probably be to remove the program and then reinstall it, but I'm concerned about losing my settings and stored emails. Oh, and if I click on a link to send mail, it does open a write window but seems to have trouble connecting to one mail server while not having trouble send to a different server. Possibly an encryption issue. tl;dr: updated, now won't open without crashing

All Replies (7)

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What are the crash ids that are being reported. See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozilla-crash-reporter-tb#w_viewing-reports-outside-of-thunderbird

A couple of things to try while you are doing that in the way of disagnostics.

  • As the to most frequent causes of crashes recently have both been add-ons. Hold shift while you start Thunderbird. Do you get the same result?
  • Have you restarted your computer? An very old solution to many things that are of a transient nature
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I am unable to find the crash reports on my machine. There is no "\Thunderbird\Crash Reports" folder that can be found (hidden directories are visible). Typing "%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Crash Reports\submitted\" and hitting Enter generates an error that Windows cannot find the folder.

Starting Thunderbird in safe mode does seem to work (never knew I could do that). Restarting with add-ons disabled works and I can open the application. Looking at what add-ons are installed I see I have the default theme and two extensions, Lightning and Provider for Google Calendar. Reenabling Lightning and restarting Thunderbird again causes a crash, reenabling the other does not. Obviously then, Lightning is causing the crash. Now to determine why...

For the second suggestion, obviously, you missed up above where I clearly stated the computer was shut down and restarted in safe mode, so yes, the computer was restarted. It was restarted many times in fact.

Modified by BernieB-22405

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On the New in Thunderbird 52.0 page there is a section titled Calendar - Lightning - Event in a Tab that gives instructions to go to Tools menu > Options > Calendar > General tab to make changes to how the calendar is displayed. There is no such option in my install. I can open the tools menu and the options menu, there is no Calendar menu. This is the 52.1.1 (32-bit) release.

Modified by BernieB-22405

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Lightning is the calendar, so if the add-on is disabled, of course you are not going to have a menu entry. The add-on that creates it is disabled.

go to the throubleshooting information on the help menu. are there any crash details in the troubleshooting information?

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Okay, in the troubleshooting section there were a large number of unsubmitted reports. I went ahead and submitted some of them. One of them would be:

bp-fc7b2cf4-9e80-4706-b156-972430170523

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I have filed a bug report for the crash. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1366926

I am guessing when I say you have a celendar iten with a dodgy date.

But it might be a good idea in this caseto go back to the old version for a while.

Assuming EN_US as a locale and windows . http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/thunderbird/releases/45.8.0/win32/en-US/

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Today I was notified that 52.2.0 was available and I immediately updated to it. It, of course, immediately crashed. Thunderbird crashed again trying to send the crash report so I shut down the computer, powered off while I went and got a cup of coffee, rebooted into Windows (7 Ultimate 32 bit) and tried Thunderbird again. It immediately crashed again, doing the same thing as previously and as reported in this thread. At that point I went and got a copy of 52.1.1, installed that and everything worked fine again. I submitted the most recent unsumbitted crash report (adb47616-2fc1-46d7-9ee5-bbb960170615) and now wait to see what happens.