698973 - When run, popup falsely says TB is already running, won't let me continue

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 278860

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[John David Galt]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 5.1; rv:7.0.1) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/7.0.1
Build ID: 20110928134238

Steps to reproduce:

I tried to start Thunderbird using the icon in my Quick Launch bar.


Actual results:

The only output is a popup that looks like this:

    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    |  Close Thunderbird                                                                             |
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------
    |  (?)  Thunderbird is already running, but is not responding.  To open a new   |
    |        window, you must first close the existing Thunderbird process, or        |
    |        restart your system.                                                                    |
    |                                               [ OK ]                                                |
    ---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Task Manager does not show any process that appears to be Thunderbird, and restarting the computer and trying again gets the same result.


Expected results:

Thunderbird should have started normally.

Comment 1

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

The message is shown in next cases.
(A) Fx/Tb is really still running, but not responding
    (Fx/Tb doesn't terminate. Started Fx/Tb freezes with no window.)
(B) parent.lock remained
    (system crash while Fx/Tb is running. occurs even after re-boot)
(C) fake error message of 'Fx/Tb is already running'
    Bug 278860, many duplicates of the Bug 278860,
    bugs listed in Dependency Tree for the bug 278860, Bug 442798, etc.

Because no Tb instance is shown in Task Manager and problem occurs even after re-boot, your case is not (A).
Did Tb start normally before? If yes, (B)?
If not (B), did you touch profiles.ini manually or touch profile directries registered in profiles.ini?
If yes, (C)?

Comment 2

[rsx11m]

Not a blocker, more like one of the usual suspects (B or C) which WADA listed.
Check C:\Documents and Settings\user\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles, enter the folder which has a random file name and see if "parent.lock" exists. If yes, delete it and see if Thunderbird starts up now (B). If you don't get to the folder to start with, that may correspond to (C), or you have to enable showing hidden files and folders in Tools > Folder Options > View of Windows Explorer.

Comment 3

[John David Galt]

Turns out the problem was that the disk drive containing my profile had been rootkitted.  A new MBR made the problem go away.  Thus I suppose the only thing wrong with TB in this regard is that the message doesn't give a clue to what's wrong.  I'll dup this.