193447 - Mozilla hangs upon trying to start the mail client, either from within mozilla or using a mozilla.exe -mail shortcut from windows.

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(SeaMonkey :: MailNews: Message Display, defect)

Description

[Greg]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021212
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.3a) Gecko/20021212

This problem has started on Mozilla (never experienced it with Netscape) and I
do not know what has caused it, possibly due to setting me SMTP my server for
out-going emails after sending an email yesterday.

Upon clicking on the mail button within Mozilla, the 'busy' cursor is shown and
the program freezes, responding to nothing, and must be End Task'ed via
ctrl-alt-delete.

Upon clicking on a mail shortcut from windows, eg one pointing at mozilla.exe
-mail, the Mozilla logo is shown, but the program then freezes and again must be
End Task'ed.

These hangs occur whether or not the mozilla quickstart program is running in
the system tray.

Composter and Adress Book both work fine, although strangely upon clicking Edit
- Preferences, the program will again hang if you click on Composer, while all
other options perform fine. 

I suspect the problem with the mail program is due to messed-up settings,
however being unable to start the mail program to be able to change these
settings (eg server details etc), it's rather a Catch 22 situation. Unless there
is a manual way to change these settings, which I am unaware of.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start Mozilla
2. Click on the mail/news icon in the bottom left of the Mozilla window.
3. Enjoy.

Or

1. Click on a shortcut to mozilla.exe - mail
2. Enjoy the logo that is now on your screen until you ctrl-alt-delete.

Actual Results:  
The program freezes and does not respond.

Expected Results:  
Opened up the mail client so my mother could send an email. 

When I got home: "you're in deep ****! netscape has gone and instead there's
only this mozilla thing, and all the emails are gone and don't work!"

Theme: Classic

I think it may have been caused by the smtp server I entered yesterday to send
an email (since I hadn't previously sent one), however the email sent without
any problems. I believe this is the last time the email client was used (I may
have used it this morning, but I do not think so). I cannot be positive the
other end recieved the email I sent as I do not know them via any other medium.

I have since had an email definately sent to this email address, and last had
the email client settings to automatically check for email every 5 minutes. It
has been 10 minutes since these emails were sent and Mozilla has given no
indication that the emails arrived, as it should have within this time period.

Comment 1

[R.K.Aa.]

Can you please try this:

Quit Mozilla (and quicklaunch, if running)
Delete the file XUL.mfl (found in your profile directory)
Restart

(XUL.mfl is a cache and will start rebuild if missing)

Any change?

Comment 2

[Greg]

I managed to fix it myself, but didn't touch XUL.mfl (as far as I can tell, anyway).

I thought it could be a profile problem, so I created a new blank profile, and
the mail worked in that. Then I tried the original profile again, but still no
luck. Then I investigated the profile mail directory and discovered there were 4
folders in there, pop.ihug.co.nz, pop.ihug.co.nz-1, Local Folders and Local
Folders-1. The contents of each duplicate folder was the same, although the
pop.ihug.co.nz-1 folder had 0 kb for it's compose file, while the original had
24k. The -1 folder also did not have a msgFilterRules.dat file.


I thought this was peculiar, so I tried deleting the -1 folders, this didn't
help. Then I restored them, and deleted the original folders, now the mail
client would open, but it did not have any inbox etc. Which didn't get me any
further. Then I restored both sets of folders, and the mail client now works. I
have since deleted the -1s folders and the mail continues to work. Clicking on
Composer under Preferences no longer crashes either.

Now, as to why those -1s folders existed, I don't know. Nor do I know why only
deleting both and restoring them (from the recycle bin) fixed the problem while
the previous deletions had little effect.

Any ideas?