Thursday, February 12, 2015

What causes Mozilla Thunderbird to Freeze constantly?

The last 1 month after a re-installation of MS Windows 8 and Mozilla Thunderbird, some productivity have drop and temper going up. One of the reasons is due to Thunderbird 31.4 freezing constantly.

Thunderbird email client, have always been on my Linux and MS Windows PC for years. But somehow, something changed that caused a lot of difficulties for me to work with emails. It is not clear when this started but its about the time I re-installed the computer.



Thunderbird setup:

  1. Thunderbird updated to version 31.4.0
  2. Email profile uses IMAP with the SMTP server in the same local network. There are few folders apart from the standard INBOX, SENT, which is less than 12 folders. Check for new messages is set to every 10 minutes and at startup.
  3. Address book includes sync with Google contacts
  4. Calendar includes Lightning sync with Google calendars
  5. Local folder is contains standard folders, which is less than 5 folders.
  6. The Profile folder is in the onedrive folder

Symptoms;

  1. After login, every 1 to 10 minutes Thunderbird freezes rather randomly. This "freeze" last about 30 seconds to 3 minutes and its not predictable.
  2. After I stop onedrive sync, problem still persist.
  3. Disconnect network and problem still persist.
Findings (to some extend)
Its unfortunate that I could not exactly identify the problem but I found 2 steps taken that have made this "freeze" vanish. In rush to resolve the problem, I did both at the same time.
  1. Using the Windows Explorer, access the C:\users\username and right click "appdata" folder, click "Advanced". UNCHECK Allow files in this folder to have contents indexed in addition to file properties, click "OK". Click "Apply" and choose to include subfolders.
  2. Open McAfee Internet Security Suite, it the default antivirus on the computer. Click on Real-Time Scanning (status is ON). Click "Real-Time Scanning:", current status is again On. Click "Settings", UNCHECK Email attachments. CHECK Strike a balance between the scan throroughness and my PC's speed (Recommended). Go back to the antivirus main screen, and turn off the "Scheduled Scans:"
If you encounter the same problem, do test and see which works for you.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

THANK YOU !!!

Your step N° 1 saved me:

"Using the Windows Explorer, access the C:\users\username and right click "appdata" folder, click "Advanced". UNCHECK Allow files in this folder to have contents indexed in addition to file properties, click "OK". Click "Apply" and choose to include subfolders."

For month now, my TB was freezing for 90 seconds each time I tried to save or send an attachment with pictures and I knew it's not TB but something wrong with Win 8.1 on my laptop!

I lookd on the web and tried so many ways to solve this isuue, but your blog saved me. Thanks so much for your post, you're a genious – everything is working fine again now, no freezing anymore. I'm so happy!

Yves

Tboxmy said...

We might be the very few people who encountered this problem.

As a note, you might have to start enabling "Allow files...indexed" in remainder folders to slowly gain back speed as you access the other folders. Or just ignore this if things work out.

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