Thunderbird quits responding to my mouse, quite suddenly!

[conceptualclarity]

Thunderbird has worked very well for me for weeks, although lately I've been getting a lot of interminable Unresponsive Script Notification windows. I've been taking advantage of Thunderbird's ability to have multiple tabs open, but have come to regret it.

Last night I opened a second Inbox tab to try to have an Inbox sorted by name rather by date. (This is something I had done without incident several times previously.) Thunderbird became totally useless, went into full perversity mode. It complicated things for me by opening up a second window that I had not called for. It got into the syndrome I've seen much of lately on Firefox of immortal tabs, basically freezing in place on the opened tab, refusing to allow me to click it out or to use the context menu to close the tab out, and refusing to allow me to move to a different tab.

I reinstalled Thundebird to try to drive out the perversity, but it didn't help much. (I just managed to close the second window.) Safe Mode didn't work either.

(Strangely when I went to the Mozilla site it offered up version 38.5. I had to go to Softpedia to get the current one of 52.1.1.)

Now, there is not a single time that I bring it up without it flashing orange with the pestiferous unresponsive script notification. (That wasn't happening before recently.) And I wait a really long time before the unresponsive script window emerges so that I can click on it.

I have brought up Thunderbird repeatedly since the reinstall, and it has been unusable. When I click on an email in the list shown, it doesn't open the email. It refuses to click out a superfluous second tab. It refuses my clicking to a different folder. The thing won't even click out at the upper right corner. I have to kill it with Process Explorer. Where an opened email's contents should be showing it is instead showing a donation message, which I really think may be a big part of the problem. I wish I could disable the donation message.

Thunderbird will scroll for me, but it will no longer do anything from my mouse, from clicking or the context menu.

I do have a large Inbox. I've got too many subscriptions, must work on that. I wanted to do mass message deletions while I was on Outlook Express until recently, but I couldn't because the geriatric state of Outlook Express made email deletion very slow.

Thunderbird was going really well for me for a while. I'd like to get it back.


Computer: DELL Dimension 2400
CPU: Intel Pentium 4-2667 (Northwood, D1)
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Ad Blocker: Ad Muncher
Default Browser: Maxthon 4.4.8.1000

 

[Vasudev]

Try Compact option for your inbox. Also try vacuuming your profile using speedyfox.

 

[AtlBo]

cc...see if you have a process called plugin-hang-ui.exe in the Thunderbird program folder. This is the process that is initiated and spawns "unresponsive script..." in Firefox. If you can find an .exe with a similar name, block it with your a-v or HIPs and see if that helps.

 

[conceptualclarity]

Try Compact option for your inbox. Also try vacuuming your profile using speedyfox.

I don't know what that is. If it's something to be done from the GUI, I can't do that right now.

I could unload a lot of the Inbox by creating an Old Inbox folder. I would need some help on that, but I'm sure it can be done.

I autostart SpeedyFox and apply it to Thunderbird and Firefox.

I just see that I have a significant but not huge Thunderbird cache, 76.8 MB. I wonder if clearing it would help.

cc...see if you have a process called plugin-hang-ui.exe in the Thunderbird program folder. This is the process that is initiated and spawns "unresponsive script..." in Firefox. If you can find an .exe with a similar name, block it with your a-v or HIPs and see if that helps.

There is such a file in the Program Files for Thunderbird. I think the logical choices for blocking it would be Process Lasso or SpyShelter. If you have suggestions about the former, that's welcome.

 

[Winter Soldier]

Sorry for the "half" off topic but I have another problem with Thunderbird: if I download an email attachment, two things may occur: I find the attachment in the path I chose, usually the desktop, via an invisible mode, without showing anything.
Or, often it is impossible to download it and I've to use the web page of my provider.
No idea about the cause of that, but this happens using the latest TB version.

 

[AtlBo]

There is such a file in the Program Files for Thunderbird. I think the logical choices for blocking it would be Process Lasso or SpyShelter. If you have suggestions about the former, that's welcome.

No suggestion, and I haven't ever tried this, but I wanted to several times with Firefox. Maybe it will help. Actually, maybe SpyShelter would be more reliable for the block now that I think about it some.

 

[conceptualclarity]

I found my way back to a Mozillazine forum where I had posted. He directed me to Download in your language, which specifies a "Windows (XP/Vista)" download, which was 38.5.0.exe. Actually I'm pretty sure this is the same version that is offered up at the main Thunderbird page. I believe as I said in #1 that autoupdating had taken me up to the 50s. I went ahead and ran 38.5.0, and thank God I've got my email back!

I still don't understand all of this. I asked the Mozillaline moderator to explain.

I am going to first use Process Lasso to disallow that process and see how it goes.

 

[AtlBo]

I still don't understand all of this. I asked the Mozillaline moderator to explain.

Might have something to do with the program being optimized for multiple cores over single core processors like yours. Good you got your e-mail back and working.

 

[stevedonato]

Here it is March 2018 and still the same dam bug. I had been using Thunderbird for over 15 years and all of a sudden this crap started about January of this year. Takes 20-30 seconds to respond to any mouse click, if at all. Some times it times out. it also takes huge amounts of CPU time. It must be the developers never heard about regression testing. I'm afraid i will have to move to Evolution. No virus issue like above. I run Linux Mint 18

 

[Vasudev]

Here it is March 2018 and still the same dam bug. I had been using Thunderbird for over 15 years and all of a sudden this crap started about January of this year. Takes 20-30 seconds to respond to any mouse click, if at all. Some times it times out. it also takes huge amounts of CPU time. It must be the developers never heard about regression testing. I'm afraid i will have to move to Evolution. No virus issue like above. I run Linux Mint 18

Open File manager and use Ctrl+H to unhide hidden files. Click on .thunderbird > Your profile_random_number.default folder and click on ImapMail. Delete or move mailbox files to trash and re-open Thunderbird. It will refresh everything and speedup mail reloads and fix random issues. The mailbox files look like text file icon on Linux mint.