1366528 - Thunderbird completely unresponsive after update to fileversion 52.1.1.6338

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[Jan de Chaffoy]

Attachment: prefs.js

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/58.0.3029.110 Safari/537.36

Steps to reproduce:

Started Thunderbird, during startup it updated to version 52.1.1. 


Actual results:

The User Interface came up, but was unresponsive. Would not even close or minimize. Had to kill it using  Windows Task Manager. Started up again and again, but the same result. Uninstalled Thunderbird completely, removed profile directory after mail backup, ran ccleaner and reinstalled Thunderbird again. Re-entered my e-mail addresses (8 in total). At first issue was gone, but came back after entering local folders (wich reside in the profile/mail directory). Deleting the local folders again wille not cure the problem. So now my only solution is a complete re-install again, with deletion of the profile directory. I suspect the culprit is the prefs.js file, which becomes corrupt, it is therefore included.


Expected results:

No freezing

Comment 1

[Jan de Chaffoy]

update:

(which reside in the profile/mail directory) ---> (which reside in the profile/12345678.default/mail directory)

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(Making this mail-security for now just because of all of the private information in prefs.js )

When it hangs, is it high CPU, or zero CPU?

Start *Windows'* safe mode with networking enabled
- win10 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/12376/windows-10-start-your-pc-in-safe-mode
Still In Windows safe mode, start thunderbird in safe mode
- https://support.mozilla.org/kb/safe-mode-thunderbird

Does problem go away?

Comment 3

[Jan de Chaffoy]

Thunderbird is high on CPU when it hangs (peaking to more than 40 %)

Will try now with Windows in safe mode.

Comment 4

[Jan de Chaffoy]

Attachment: prefs.js_working : with this file Thunderbird works properly (see comment 6)

Comment 5

[Jan de Chaffoy]

Attachment: prefs.js_freeze : with this prefs.js file Thunderbird freezes (see comment 6)

Comment 6

[Jan de Chaffoy]

UPDATE on this bug
------------------

- In comment 3 I stated that CPU was high. This is not always the case. It can be low too (between 0% and 3%).
  However, when high it will not go low or vice versa. For the moment I have no clue what makes the difference 
  between low and high, but I will observe this issue.

- When running windows in safe mode, the problem is still there.

- When starting Thunderbird in safe mode, while still in Windows safe mode, the problem remains.

- In my bug report I stated that I had to reinstall Thunderbird to make it work again. Now I found out that
  deleting the prefs.js file and replacing it with a backup from a "working" one solves the problem too. 
  That narrows the problem to the profiles directory, and more specifically to the prefs.js file. In one way or
  another Thunderbird will not handle too many e-mail entries properly. 

- For the moment I do the testing with two prefs.js files. One file contains 7 mail address entries + local folders
  and Thunderbird will handle this properly (this file = prefs.js_working), the other file contains 8 mail
  addresses + local folders (I added one address in comparison with prefs.js_working). This file will let
  Thunderbird freeze (this file = prefs.js_freeze). Both preference files are included. I wonder if there is 
  somewhere a (hidden) limit in the number of accounts, since the working prefs.js file counts 8 (2³) accounts and the
  freezing prefs.js file counts 9 ( > 2³) accounts. I include both prefs.js files.

Comment 7

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Have you made any further progress on identifying the lines at fault?
Does problem also happen with beta? http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/channel/

I don't see much difference between the two prefs - the major one being the freeeze has one more account, as you point out.  freeze also has
user_pref("idle.lastDailyNotification", 1495489796);
several lines containing datareporting.sessions
user_pref("places.database.lastMaintenance", 1495489796);
user_pref("storage.vacuum.last.index", 0);
user_pref("storage.vacuum.last.places.sqlite", 1495489796);

Comment 8

[Jan de Chaffoy]

Hello,

this bugreport can be closed, because the problem has gone with an earlier update of Thunderbird.

The problem was related to the stopping of an unresponsive javascript while starting Thunderbird.

As the javascript is not unresponsive anymore, everything looks fine.

Many thanks for your cooperation.

Kind regards,
Jan de Chaffoy