1272337 - [imap] when thunderbird receives new mail, notification screen is blank. Caused by ESET

Status: RESOLVED INVALID

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[info]

Attachment: bug_tb.jpg

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/50.0.2661.94 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Since Tuesday the 10th of may 2016, a lot of my thunderbird users have weird issues using thunderbird when downloading messages (from IMAP internal server, no ssl).
_The IMAP server didn't change (MDaemon Pro 10.X)
_Thunderbird didn't change (we use the stable branch, version 45)

It happens:
_When starting thunderbird, during IMAP downloading
_When thunderbird check email every 10 min
It seems that the problem occurs only on Windows 7, Windows XP and Linux users seems to have no problems.


Actual results:

_When starting thunderbird, it crashes (we did send the crash reports)
_When thunderbird check email every 10 min, the notification screen is blank although the email are present on the folder (see attachment). The blank notification screen remains during 2-5 minutes, although it is set to 10 seconds.
This new email may:
_appear (the screenshot case)
_remains blank. We then see the previously read header with a blank body

If you wait for 2-5 min, thunderbird may display successfully the emails. The duration seems to be related with the number of new emails.


Expected results:

_The notification screen must display the new email(s)
_We should have the proper email displayed

Note: some users use Windows Mail, outlook and didn't experience this problem. Furthermore, I did try Claws Mail 3.13 (under windows 7) successfully.

To try to fix the problem, I tried several things
_Disable windows 7 firewall, as it seemed to be a timeout issue - didn't fix
_Tried "thunderfix", which empty all the MSF file. Thunderbird reloaded the whole mailbox but it fixed nothing
_Reboot MDaemon server. Nothing. Since the problem occurs only on thunderbird, it may not be related to the server IMAP.

Comment 1

[info]

Attachment: bug_tb2.jpg

here comes the other case: notification screen blank and when I select the new email, body became blank too and the displayed header stays on the previously displayed email.

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Start *Windows'* safe mode with networking enabled
- win10 http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/change-startup-settings-in-windows-10
Still In Windows safe mode, start thunderbird in safe mode
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/safe-mode-thunderbird

Does problem go away?

Comment 3

[info]

As written here (https://support.mozilla.org/questions/1122731 ), it seems to work using windows 7 safe mode, but the computer is then barely usable (obviously)

I'm trying to deploy the 45.1 update everywhere to see if its fixes the problem.

Thanks you for your reply.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

> _When starting thunderbird, it crashes (we did send the crash reports)

Please post your crash IDs
 see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/mozilla-crash-reporter#w_viewing-crash-reports

Did the crashes also stop in Windows safe mode?

Comment 5

[Steve]

I would like to add a datapoint.

After folks started updating to TB 45+, the same issue as the original comment started occurring.
We do not have Thunderbird crash, but some email body text in the IMAP account can't be seen like in second attachment and also the automatic notifications sshow as gray boxes. They do stay up almost indefinitely until I go to the user and kill thunderbird process.

Our IMAP accounts are usually setup so many users access the access the same emails... think a general support email box, that 10-20 users access at the same time. (only a few have write access to delete or move message, majority have only read access.) Anyway, some users can read the messages that have this "grey box" while others can not. When the users get blank or gray boxes is random. I'm unable to find a pattern.

Comment 6

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to Steve from comment #5)
> I would like to add a datapoint.
> 
> After folks started updating to TB 45+, the same issue as the original
> comment started occurring.
> We do not have Thunderbird crash, but some email body text in the IMAP
> account can't be seen like in second attachment and also the automatic
> notifications sshow as gray boxes. They do stay up almost indefinitely until
> I go to the user and kill thunderbird process.
> 
> Our IMAP accounts are usually setup so many users access the access the same
> emails... think a general support email box, that 10-20 users access at the
> same time. (only a few have write access to delete or move message, majority
> have only read access.) Anyway, some users can read the messages that have
> this "grey box" while others can not. When the users get blank or gray boxes
> is random. I'm unable to find a pattern.

Start *Windows'* safe mode with networking enabled
- win10 http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10/change-startup-settings-in-windows-10
Still In Windows safe mode, start thunderbird in safe mode
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/safe-mode-thunderbird

Does problem go away?

Comment 7

[info]

After a lot of tests, it occurred to me that the antivirus was the potential culprit.
It seems that a windows 7 update changed something on the way the antivirus works and thunderbird get impacted.
I used ESET NOD32 5.XX and got the problem. The problem is not fixed with the latest 6.3.XX version.

I contacted ESET and they said they didn't install the latest windows 7 update but they will try it very soon.
In the meantime, the ESET antivirus can be set up to don't mess with thunderbird and voila, it works.

Comment 8

[Steve]

(In reply to info from comment #7)
> After a lot of tests, it occurred to me that the antivirus was the potential
> culprit.
> It seems that a windows 7 update changed something on the way the antivirus
> works and thunderbird get impacted.
> I used ESET NOD32 5.XX and got the problem. The problem is not fixed with
> the latest 6.3.XX version.
> 
> I contacted ESET and they said they didn't install the latest windows 7
> update but they will try it very soon.
> In the meantime, the ESET antivirus can be set up to don't mess with
> thunderbird and voila, it works.

Ironically, we use Mdaemon and ESET as well. Disabling the IMAP protocol filtering on ESET seems to do make it IMAP function all the time now.

Comment 9

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

per comment 7.

info, thanks for the "info" :)