250374 - thunderbird starts up to a blank/empty screen

Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[Chris Petersen]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040510 Galeon/1.3.16
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.6) Gecko/20040510 Galeon/1.3.16

Recently upgraded to a clean install of 0.7.1.  It was working fine for awhile,
but now it occasionally starts up to one of three different blank screens.  One
of these is a completely blank window -- no content whatsoever (no menus, etc).
 The second gets slightly further and renders the three window frames, but again
no menus, etc.  The third shows the menu, button bar, etc. but no accounts or
content of any sort are listed in the frames.  Quitting and restarting
thunderbird usually results in a working thunderbird (I don't think I've had the
blank windows show up twice in a row).  It is, however, becoming more frequent,
probably enhanced by the random segfaults described at
http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=244145

Reproducible: Sometimes
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open thunderbird
Actual Results:  
sometimes, works fine.  Other times, problem happens as described in Details.

Expected Results:  
works fine.

Comment 1

[Philippe Landau]

i get the same 3 empty panes half the time with 1.0rc1 at startup.

Comment 2

[Philippe Landau]

for me this problem was due to an old extension for rearranging the
account/folder pane. as soon as i deleted it, the problem did not show up
anymore. could this extension be disabled automatically for people upgrading to
1.x versions ?

Comment 3

[Chris Petersen]

I only have Buttons, Quote Colors and Dictionary Search installed.  All of them
seem to work with 0.9 (the fedora core 3 default)

Comment 4

[James Mitchell]

I've had this problem through several versions of Tbird - now with 1.0 on XP
(SP2).  

I've tried deleting the Chrome directory as well as old TBird installation
directories.  That seemed to fix it for a week or so, but then it reappeared.

If someone knows of a fix would you be kind enough to email me. 
[e-mail]

Comment 5

[Konstantin Svist]

I've been getting the same problem since Thunderbird 0.9
At some random times, it starts up to blank frames and just sits there. If I
kill it and restart, it starts up fine.
I'll attach a screenshot of the problem since nobody else has done that yet..
maybe it'll help :)


my TB details:
********************************************************************
Last updated: Thu, 31 Mar 2005 16:51:07 GMT

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.7.6)
Gecko/20050317 Thunderbird/1.0.2 Mnenhy/0.7.1

*** Extensions (enabled: 17, disabled: 4)
Buttons! 0.5.0
ConfigDate 0.2.1
Contacts Sidebar 0.5
DictionarySearch 0.8
Easy Get Mail Button 0.2 [disabled]
Folderpane Tools 0.0.1
Forumzilla 0.5.2 [disabled]
No New Window on Double Click 0.1.0
Quote Colors 0.2.6
Show SMTP Username 0.2.1 [disabled]
Mail Redirect 0.6
Mnenhy 0.7.1
Sender Verification Extension 0.501:2005-01-09
Slim Extension List 0.1
MessageID-Finder 1.9.9
Translation Panel 1.4.13+ [disabled]
TB In-line Spell Checker 0.4.75
AboutConfig 0.4
addressContext 0.6
URL Link 1.05.2
InfoLister 0.8.2

*** Themes (2)
Noia/Cute (Yop) 1.8 [selected]
Thunderbird (default) 2.0
********************************************************************

Comment 6

[Konstantin Svist]

Attachment: screenshot of Thunderbird stuck during startup

Comment 7

[Chris Petersen]

interesting, looks different than mine.  When it hangs for me, I get the menu
bar (maybe you've somehow hidden it, I didn't know you could do that in
windows), but only about 3 of the menus show up.  The rest are probably still
there, with a space for their name, since there are some empty ones with no
content in the place of file/edit, etc.  I'll try to remember to send in a
screenshot when it happens again (seems only to happen -- and not every time --
when I don't quit thunderbird myself, but I close down X or thunderbird crashes
-- another bug, but I forget the number for it -- if I just quit and reopen, it
works fine and I can't replicate the issue)

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #7)
> interesting, looks different than mine.  When it hangs for me, I get the menu
> bar (maybe you've somehow hidden it, I didn't know you could do that in
> windows), but only about 3 of the menus show up.  The rest are probably still
> there, with a space for their name, since there are some empty ones with no
> content in the place of file/edit, etc.  I'll try to remember to send in a
> screenshot when it happens again 

My symptoms similar except I'm windows TB (nightly) version 0.6+ (20050203)
extensions: installquotecollapse, Timestamp
been running this for 2 months with no changes in TB or extensions
TB just stopped processing new mail and didn't work for about 24 hours. 

During that period I restarted TB, all I got was the command menu and the 3
panes (don't recall if mail toobar was visible). I restarted a couple
times more and same problem.  Tried again Sunday 4/3 and finally it "woke up" -
everything displays and works. Unable to recreate.

So it's strange - I did not delete any files in the profile or change anything
to get it working again.

Chris, has the frequency increased and have you upgraded versions since first
reporting?

CONFIRMing (no dups that I can see) though I'm not convinced the problem is TB,
there are no other leads.

Comment 9

[Chris Petersen]

Attachment: screenshot from xris

This shows the "other" behavior for incorrect startup, where some menus render,
but not others.  The file/edit/etc menus are still there, but are blank and
empty.

Comment 10

[Chris Petersen]

Frequency hasn't increased.  It seems like it's gone down, but that may just be
that I've somehow figured out how to avoid having it happen.  Like I said
before, I'm pretty sure that I only see this after thunderbird is quit
abnormally (eg. run from commandline and then control-C, killall
thunderbird-bin, etc).  But nothing is consistent -- sometimes it happens,
sometimes it doesn't (I just killed/restarted a few times in a row and couldn't
reproduce it).

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

Jim, more detail re: your comment #4 would be interesting

(p.s. like Jim I'm XP, not linux)

Comment 12

[Konstantin Svist]

(In reply to comment #2)
> for me this problem was due to an old extension for rearranging the
> account/folder pane. as soon as i deleted it, the problem did not show up
> anymore. could this extension be disabled automatically for people upgrading to
> 1.x versions ?

Interesting.. I just noticed there's a fresh version of Folderpane Tools at
http://www.chuonthis.com/extensions/folderpane.php - maybe it will fix the
problem (if of course it causes the problem in the first place)

Comment 13

[Chris Petersen]

I don't use folderpane tools, and still see this problem occasionally.

Comment 14

[Heiko Adams]

I've got the same problem on Win2K Sp4 and Update rollup pack 1. Seems to a
general and not linux specific bug.
So please set OS to "All"

Comment 15

[John Benes]

version 1.0+ (20050709) - Windows XP

version 1.0+ (20050707) ID:2005070710 works.
version 1.0+ (20050708) ID:2005070806 fails with the exace same symptoms
described here. (regression)

The following errors are present in the JS Console:

Error: [Exception... "Component returned failure code: 0x8000ffff
(NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED) [nsIPrefBranch.getIntPref]"  nsresult: "0x8000ffff
(NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED)"  location: "JS frame ::
file:///C:/Program%20Files/Mozilla%20Thunderbird/components/offlineStartup.js ::
anonymous :: line 77"  data: no]
Source File:
file:///C:/Program%20Files/Mozilla%20Thunderbird/components/offlineStartup.js
Line: 77

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code:
0x8000ffff (NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED) [nsIPrefBranch.getIntPref]"  nsresult:
"0x8000ffff (NS_ERROR_UNEXPECTED)"  location: "JS frame ::
chrome://messenger/content/msgMail3PaneWindow.js :: UpdateMailPaneConfig :: line
622"  data: no]

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Component returned failure code:
0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE) [nsIObserverService.removeObserver]"  nsresult:
"0x80004005 (NS_ERROR_FAILURE)"  location: "JS frame ::
chrome://messenger/content/commandglue.js :: RemoveMailOfflineObserver :: line
985"  data: no]

->PC/All, regression ?

Comment 16

[Adam Guthrie]

*** Bug 300218 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

Comment 17

[moonchildhk]

Attachment: Screengrab from Linux / FC4 / KDE

Comment 18

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Attachment 210455 [details] from bug 325549 shows the same startup under WinXP using a recent trunk nightly.  I'm curious if reporters here (a) are still seeing the problem under Linux/BSD/*nix with either 1.5 release or 1.6 nightlies, and (b) if they have seen the other symptom at that bug, attachment 210452 [details].

Comment 19

[Chris Petersen]

I haven't seen this in linux since upgrading to 1.5 beta a few months ago.  But at that time, I also switched to using the official tarballs instead of distro-supplied packages (fedora and ubuntu)

Comment 20

[Simon Austin]

For me, this was being caused by the View Headers Toggle Button extension after an upgrade to 1.5.0 and then 1.5.1 (occured more often with 1.5.1) on WinXP. According to a note on that extensions site:

"IMPORTANT NOTE for users upgrading from versions prior to the 1.5.0 release: due to a flaw in the Thunderbird installer please uninstall the old version of the extension and restart Thunderbird before installing the new version."

After uninstalling and re-installing the extension, TB is now starting happily.

The blankness was worse when I also had the Plaxo extension installed, even though it was disabled because it was incompatible with 1.5.x.

Comment 21

[Frank]

Attachment: Screendump Dutch TB on WinXP

In my case the folders are shown, but the folder pane stays empty. Haven't seen this in other screendumps.

Comment 22

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

Closing this as WFM per reporter's comment 19.  Feel free to reopen if this problem recurs or persists.


(In reply to comment #21)
> In my case the folders are shown, but the folder pane stays empty. Haven't
> seen this in other screendumps.

Frank, I think that's bug 312938.

Comment 23

[Frank]

(In reply to comment #22)
> (In reply to comment #21)
> > In my case the folders are shown, but the folder pane stays empty. Haven't
> > seen this in other screendumps.
> 
> Frank, I think that's bug 312938.

No, it is not. I don't use the preview pane. I now use the "Folderpane Tools" extension (http://www.chuonthis.com/extensions/), which allowed me to select a default folder to show at startup. Afer I installed it, it apparently has changed a setting, because even when I disable it the in-box is opened.