Sorry, but I have only casually followed this thread, so maybe my idea is out
of range.
I had several troubles with Thunderbird, a little while ago. It could end up
crashing, would not let me read and edit my composing messages, and
redownloaded loads of messages that I had deleted. I was ready to scream, out
of frustration.
I did a few things, and exactly which one took care of what issue, I cannot
tell. But I will leave you the idea of what I did, and you can take it for what
it is worth. For weeks now, my Thunderbird has behaved close to decently.
Before I go anything further, though, let me bring you one suggested
workaround, which might just be handy when you get into trouble.
Write your messages in an editor like Notepad, then copy and paste them into
Thunderbird. If you are replying to a message, go ahead like this.
1. Open the composing window, by hitting the Reply-to, or the Reply-to-All key;
as would you have done normally.
2. Once the composing window opens, hit Ctrl-A, followed by Ctrl-X; to mark and
cut all current info.
3. Open Notepad, and paste your cut message in, with Ctrl-V.
4. Do all your editting, add on any text you want, or do whatever is needed to
the text.
5. When ready for sending it, hit Ctrl-A, followed by Ctrl-X.
6. Go back to the composing window, hit Ctrl-V, and all your updated info will
be pasted into the email.
7. Now simply hit the Send-key (Ctrl-Enter by default).
Like I said, a workaround, should anything else fail.
Then, over to the fixing. First of all, I take it that you are running the
latest Thunderbird. If not, go ahead and update it. The quickest way would be
through Ninite.com.
Secondly, check your window-Eyes apps, currently running. If you happen to have
Thunderbird Enhance installed, turn it off. You can always turn it back on. My
experience is that it did little that I cannot live without, and ended up
giving more trouble than anything. Not even sure if it still is being
maintained.
Next thing is to make sure thunderbird is clean.
1. Under the File menu in TB, run the choice that says
Compacting Folders.
2. Under the View menu, Open the Toolbars choice, and make sure as few toolbars
as possible are activated. Mine is set to only show the menu-bar, and the
status-bar. If you hear Checked, on any other of the choices, hit Enter, to
turn it off. Note that you will have to reopen the View menu, if you have
turned off any of the choices, and revisit the Toolbar list, till you ar sure
there will be no more adjustments to be made here.
3. Under the Tools menu, open the Add-On choice, and make sure no unnecessary
ad-ons are running.
4. Still under Tools menu, choose
Clear All History.
5. Again in the Tools menu, Open the Options screen.
6. In the Options screen, Right or Left arrow till you get to the Composition
tab, and then tab down through the different choices. If you do know no other
thing to do, try hitting Enter on the choice (near the bottom of the dialog)
that says Restore Defaults.
7. Still in the Options screen, go to the Privacy tab. Tab down to the choice
that says
Show Cookies,
and hit Enter on that one. A new dialog will open, and you hit Tab once, and
land on what WE will report as an edit box, but which is more like a listbox.
You here can up and down arrow, through the list of cookies that might be on
your system, under Thunderbird. If you have any, that you know for certainty
you need, leave them, otherwise get rid of whatever is in the list. If you
don't need any, simply just tab a couple of times, and hit Enter on the choice
that says Remove All Cookies.
You now should be pretty much done with the clean-up of your TB, so use Alt-F4
way back through the menus, till you get to the main Thunderbird window. If you
want to make sure, Close TB, and reopen it. See if any of this did happen to
take care of your troubles.
In my case, still Thunderbird had its funny tricks. Out of normal good computer
behavior, I decided it would be time for a general wash, vacuum and laundry of
my system, so I ran the handful of security and Anti-malware installed on my
system. The first ones I ran, gave no real go with my TB troubles. Finally, I
came to the Spybot Search And Destroy, which you will find on Ninite.com. I ran
it, and though it took its time to scan my computer, let it fix what it found
for errors. Seemingly, it caught up with something that had failed the other
pieces of Anti-software here. Whatever it was, I am not able to tell, but like
I initially stated, my TB has behaved quite decently for a few weeks now. Gone
are the composing trouble, and gone are much of the crashes. And, it does no
longer redownload deleted messages. All in all, it runs smoothly as I have come
to know would be the best you can expect from software on modern computers.
Again, I do not know your exact issues, and I have no clue whether any of the
above suggestions would prove anything helpful. Yet, no matter if they do or
not, the suggested steps will ensure you have a clean computer and as clean as
possible a Thunderbird. And really, that in itself is a good startout for any
further steps, so would recommend you consider caring for your system and
software. If you still experience trouble, one thing you could try, is to turn
off ALL apps under WE, just to see if there might be conflicts with any other,
unforetoled, app on your system. Furthermore, try to restart your system, with
a Cold-Boot. That is, turn it totally Off, By holding in the On/Off button for
a second or two, before releasing it. Then turn back on the system.
Once Windows, and your screen reader is up running, before doing anything else,
would you please open Thunderbird? Then try composing a new message. Will you
here be able to do your editing as you want? At least, now no other software on
your computer might be in TB's way, so you are one step further to determine if
the trouble really sits in TB, or nests itself any other place on your system.
As a last resort, you could try the following steps.
1. Backup your TB folder in its full. You get to it, by hitting Windows-R, and
typing in
%appdata%
and hitting Enter. Please include the percent character on both sides, exactly
as shown above. Scroll down the list of folders, and you will find either a
Mozilla or a Thunderbird folder. Copy it to a safe place, preferably an
external disk or USB Pen drive.
2. Uninstall Thunderbird altogether from your system. Conclude with a fresh
restart, or cold-boot of your computer.
3. Redownload, and reinstall TB. Again, it is nicely and bloatware-free from
Ninite.com. That includes, you won't see any extras installed "behind your
back", do you use the Ninite installer.
4. Again open the %Appdata% folder as described above. Paste in your backed up
version of the folder, making sure to confirm any overwriting of the newly
created folder.
5. Start TB, and see if your troubles are gone, and your days are smiling.
Hope any of these, however many suggestions have proven helpful to you. If not,
come back and tell us your findings, and let's see if someone could happen to
have further ideas.
David
On 11/14/2016 4:33 AM, Jed Barton via Talk wrote:
Hey guys,
Unless anyone has any other suggestions, i think i have to give up on
thunderbird. I am absolutely floored that noone else is having this issue.
Furthermore it's very troubling that this problem can't be corrected at all, or
noone has a clue. When i 1st got thunderbird, i couldn't praise it enough.
Now the program is so unreliable, it's awful. It's quite frankly unacceptable.
I have literally tried everything i can think of. Does anyone ahve
suggestions? Yet again, i am writing you this message, and i can't even read
it, cause wh i arrow up and down thunderbird in its usual fashion says nothing
at all.
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