337814 - Mail gets deleted when doing compact folders

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: Mail Window Front End, defect)

Description

[M. Kools]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060426 Firefox/1.5.0.3
Build Identifier: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.3) Gecko/20060426 Firefox/1.5.0.3

I did compact folders on my inbox, and now all my mail is gone!

Reproducible: Didn't try

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Initiate compact folders
2.
3.

Actual Results:  
The mail pane clears, and all the mail is gone!

Comment 1

[Mike Cowperthwaite]

(In reply to comment #0)
> I did compact folders on my inbox, and now all my mail is gone!

Are you sure it's gone?  What happens when you select a different folder, then return to the compacted folder?  See bug 209883.

Comment 2

[M. Kools]

(In reply to comment #1)
> (In reply to comment #0)
> > I did compact folders on my inbox, and now all my mail is gone!
> 
> Are you sure it's gone?  What happens when you select a different folder, then
> return to the compacted folder?  See bug 209883.
> 

Yup, it's all gone. I tried doing it for a different folder (after making a backup), and there was no problem.

Comment 3

[Daniel Grubbs]

This happened to me, as well.  It may be a problem of compatibility with my anti virus software. I use AntiVir, and recently it has been finding a virus: JS/Yammaner.A.2, in my inbox for a particular email address. I deleted what I thought was the offending email, but continued to get the warning from AntiVir. I then went to compact the folder, at which point the AntiVir warning popped up. On closing the warning, I found that all the messages in the folder had disappeared. The file, which I believe used to hold all of the messages, now had 0 bytes.

Comment 4

[David :Bienvenu]

Daniel, that's almost certainly your virus checker's doing.

Comment 5

[Daniel Grubbs]

(In reply to comment #4)
> Daniel, that's almost certainly your virus checker's doing.
> 

Yes,and no. It seems likely to me that the antivirus program interfered with either reading or copying the file. An exception should have been thrown which Thunderbird didn't catch, or handle properly. I don't know if this is the same problem that the original poster had, but it still seems to be a bug. Thunderbird shouldn't just go ahead and erase all of the e-mail messages.

Comment 6

[M. Kools]

(In reply to comment #5)
> (In reply to comment #4)
> > Daniel, that's almost certainly your virus checker's doing.
> > 
> 
> Yes,and no. It seems likely to me that the antivirus program interfered with
> either reading or copying the file. An exception should have been thrown which
> Thunderbird didn't catch, or handle properly. I don't know if this is the same
> problem that the original poster had, but it still seems to be a bug.
> Thunderbird shouldn't just go ahead and erase all of the e-mail messages.
> 
I do have a virus scanner, but I didn't have any emails that contained a virus, my ISP picks those up already. I've tried compacting a couple of times since then, but haven't been able to reproduce it anymore

Comment 7

[davidt381]

Compacted my inbox, then when I went to reopen thunderbird all my inbox emails had disappeared for the last two years. But the sent mail box kept the original emails - showing properties of nearly half a gig of sent emails. Have found the Local Folder and the inbox appears to have no emails.
Tried most things suggested on various discussion boards now downloading a program to find deleted files.

Comment 8

[Jules]

I can reproduce this bug with Thunderbird 1.5.0.5, connected to a Courier IMAP server 4.0.1. No virus scanner installed.

I have verified that it is actually deleting the files from the maildir on the IMAP server.

Comment 9

[Daniel AJ Sokolov]

I've suffered the same problem: Yesterday (Oct 28) I deleted the Inbox.msf-file, started Thunderbird 1.5.0.7 (WinXP SP2) and started the Inbox compression. After it was finished, all mails in the Inbox after 8th of February 2006 had vanished.

They have really vanished, I checked the Inbox-file with a text editor.

There was no action of my Anti-Virus involved. I have now idea what caused the malfunction of the compression.

Comment 10

[Jim Crutchfield]

See also Bug No. 367083.  Seems to be the same problem, and I just had it too, with no anti-virus involvement.

Comment 11

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

M. Kools   not necessary for there to be a virus in mail for scanner to cause problem.  

Do you still see the problem?  What do you conclude from  http://kb.mozillazine.org/Empty_folders and
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Disappearing_mail ??

Comment 12

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

With no definitive responses including original reporter I'm going to close this incomplete. This WFM, but it would be nice to know who thinks the problem is gone. So please comment about your present status when using version 2 - is the problem gone?