Thunderbird fails to load/send email

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My wife and I use Thunderbird on our separate computers. Was working well for both, and my previous problem of vanishing email no longer occurs in my new computer. But hers stopped uploading or sending out email at or after 8pm May 14 (2 days ago). Her email settings are unchanged and identical to mine (other than her id). Her new email is there in webmail and in Windows Live Mail (which she will use under protest) but she would much prefer her Thunderbird to be working….

Her Thunderbird tries unsuccessfully to access the mail server at the identical address to mine. I have uninstalled the program and reinstalled with the current version (17.06). I don’t know where to look further. Any ideas?

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I wonder if her firewall may be somehow blocking the email server while yours is not.

Maybe she has a Windows update that you don’t have which is causing an issue.

Maybe some email she received or sent has gummed up the works — although you both have the same email program, you don’t have the same email.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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I wonder. But her firewall lets her email through to Windows Live Mail….

We both allow automatic Windows updates – and I received the last batch this morning. Still getting my email….

Our AV (Panda) doesn’t seem to have found any nasties in our email, but true that much of her email is different from mine….

Still a mystery….

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Have you contacted your email provider’s tech support line? They may be able to help you with it.

If they can’t….

I wonder. But her firewall lets her email through to Windows Live Mail….

I think we can eliminate the firewall as the culprit.

We both allow automatic Windows updates – and I received the last batch this morning. Still getting my email….

We can probably eliminate a Windows update as the culprit. But if there is some other factor in the mix that doesn’t play well with a particular Windows update, and that factor is present on her computer but not yours, it is possible that it is a Windows update.

Our AV (Panda) doesn’t seem to have found any nasties in our email, but true that much of her email is different from mine….

Could be an email; could be an email attachment that she received and opened.

By the way, you never said which version of Windows you’re each running, which computers you are running, how much memory, how much hard drive space, etc. For instance, if her hard drive is about full, certain things will quit working. If her hard drive is very badly fragmented, this could have an impact. If she is running XP service pack 2, perhaps some necessary process requires service pack 3 at a minimum.

Even though the following items may or may not be related to the problem, I would do the following, just for good housekeeping if for nothing else. You may get lucky and fix the problem as a result.

* Clean up her hard drive. Delete unnecessary files. Uninstall undesired programs, such as the junk that comes preinstalled on a new computer. Once you get the hard drive cleaned up, defrag the hard drive. Run defrag a few times, just for good measure.

* Make sure that her Windows updates are up to date. (You said that you’re already doing this.)

* Make sure that Thunderbird is up to date.

* Make sure that Panda is up to date, then do a complete scan of the computer.

* Make sure that she has enough memory in the computer. 2 GB should be enough, unless you’re doing AutoCAD, heavy-duty gaming, or some other resource-intensive activity.

* Make sure that the computer’s BIOS is at the newest version.

* Make sure that her NIC (network interface card) has the latest driver.

In the past, when I couldn’t figure out a computer problem, I would just go down the list and do a whole bunch of housekeeping tasks. I often resolved the problem as a result.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Thanks mrjim. I’ll try to go through your points.

Our email provider tech service supports only Microsoft email systems. The rest of us are on our own.

A Windows update problem seems unlikely and I wouldn’t know how to find it if that were the problem.

The latest version of Thunderbird was installed today and Panda is updated automatically – the last time this morning.

Ann’s system – Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, with Intel Core i5-3740 and 8GB. Her 500GB hard drive is 114GB full, and is currently about 1% fragmented. Our systems are custom built with no proprietary add-on junk. Hers is three months old, my more robust system is 8 months old. She does not do AutoCAD, heavy-duty gaming etc – mainly considerable email, her favourite games and some photo editing.

The computer’s BOS and NIC are getting up past the limits of my comfort zone. But I trust the expert who has built our computers for years to have installed the newest versions that short time ago.

In short, nothing jumps out as grossly neglected and likely to be causing trouble. I can still do some more checking and try to find some unnecessary junk to delete, but I’m not hopeful. She might just have to be content with Windows Live Mail….

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Thanks mrjim. I’ll try to go through your points.

Our email provider tech service supports only Microsoft email systems. The rest of us are on our own.

A Windows update problem seems unlikely and I wouldn’t know how to find it if that were the problem.

The latest version of Thunderbird was installed today and Panda is updated automatically – the last time this morning.

Ann’s system – Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit, with Intel Core i5-3740 and 8GB. Her 500GB hard drive is 114GB full, and is currently about 1% fragmented. Our systems are custom built with no proprietary add-on junk. Hers is three months old, my more robust system is 8 months old. She does not do AutoCAD, heavy-duty gaming etc – mainly considerable email, her favourite games and some photo editing.

The computer’s BOS and NIC are getting up past the limits of my comfort zone. But I trust the expert who has built our computers for years to have installed the newest versions that short time ago.

In short, nothing jumps out as grossly neglected and likely to be causing trouble. I can still do some more checking and try to find some unnecessary junk to delete, but I’m not hopeful. She might just have to be content with Windows Live Mail….

The only possible red flag I see in the above is that it was a custom-made system. My experience with custom-made systems that people have purchased has been that the vendor often tends to get the cheapest parts he can so as to cut his cost.

(I can’t wait to hear from all of the people on this forum who sell custom-made computers!)

I’m not saying that your vendor did that; you may in fact have very good quality stuff. But I am saying that I have often seen this sort of thing.

Group "L" (Linux Mint)
with Windows 10 running in a remote session on my file server

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Her Thunderbird tries unsuccessfully to access the mail server at the identical address to mine.

I’m not familiar with Thunderbird but surely it will give an error message or other details as to why it can’t connect.

If you can find those details it would be a great help in understanding what is going wrong.

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I don’t think so in this case. My vendor has stayed in business for 30 years by providing quality sales and service. He is far from a fly-by-night operator. I haven’t tried this problem on with him yet, but may do so, though Thunderbird isn’t his favourite email system…. Otherwise, Ann seems to be fairly comfortable with Live Mail, until a solution pops up….

To Browni, Thunderbird hasn’t shown an error message of any kind. It’s just ‘unable to contact the server’. It may have nothing to do with Thunderbird at all, but if so it’s odd that her mail is only blocked to Thunderbird.

Thanks for all your efforts to help….

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Hmmm,

OK, let’s bypass Thunderbird and see if the PC can see the mail server.

To try this, open up a command prompt and enter “ping mailserver.com” sans quotes and obviously use your ISP’s mail server name.

Don’t worry about timeouts & packet loss, that is normal when pinging an email server, the important thing to note is if the server name gets translated to an IP address.

What do you see when running the above command?

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Seems too work.

can I post an image here? 33970-ping

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Are you sure that shawmail.com is the correct address for the mail server?

That URL is registered to a UK entity! (Whois record for shawmail.com)

I came across this Mail Server Names which gives details of the settings reqd for Shaw email which I presume you are using.

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Hmmm… ok. I am confused about the shaw server. Not sure why I tried that shawmail.com. The site you link to for server names gives pop.shaw.ca as the outgoing server name. The ping thing doesn’t like ‘ping.pop.shaw.ca.com’.
The server name that I have to use to send/receive email is actually ‘shawmail.no.shawcable.net’. That doesn’t ping either. However, I have no problem doing email with that address in my computer, nor did Ann until May 14th.

I am giving up on this problem for now. Live Mail is working for Ann (using that server address….)

Thanks for helping.

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I’ve been having problems with Thunderbird since May 15, 2013 and found this thread. I have a Windows pentium-level PC running Windows 7, with automatic updates complete. Thunderbird is version 17.0.6 AT&T is my DSL provider, and my email primary account and subaccounts all end with @bellsouth.net

My primary account stopped receiving mail in Thunderbird on May 15, midmorning.

What is strange is that all the subaccounts work in Thunderbird. I have (for months) run my accounts through gmail as well. My primary account is usable when I go through gmail. Back in Thunderbird, the primary account won’t let me repair the folder or delete a message without crashing.

About the same time that I noticed the primary account wasn’t receiving messages, a “WARNING NOTICE from the AT&T Internet Services Security Center” appeared, advising me that my account “may have been compromised” and advising me to change my password, which I did. As I’m able to use the account through gmail’s servers, the account doesn’t seem to have been suspended.

I updated all the plugins/extensions on Mozilla after the problems started. I notice a number of complaints on the Mozilla support pages about AT&T’s “not playing nicely with” Thunderbird.

Mainly, I’m curious about how it is that my secondary accounts still work in Thunderbird, but not the primary one, while all of them are useable in gmail (an interface I’m not as happy with).

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Could these problems be related to a full memory on the server of your email account?
In GMail I have about 10 GB of space for all incoming emails. If this space is (almost) fully used, I cannot download new emails. Only after making free space, I can again receive new emails. The emails which have been sent in the meantime are lost in space.
Maybe, just maybe this might be of help.

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Have you tried asking the question here?

https://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging

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Assuming that the eventual server name issues are resolved:

It seems to me the most obvious has not been asked/suggested.

[*]Thunderbird NOT running!
[*]Go to the Thunderbird profile folder, go in to the mail sub folder of the account in question, delete all .msf files.
[*]Start TB.
[*]Compact folders (File menu).
[*]Empty Trash, Sent, Spam and similar folders.
[*]Compact folders (File menu).
[*]Empty Trash again.
[*]Compact folders (File menu).

That has ALWAYS done it for me!

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When I have had weird problems with Thunderbird before, I often traced it to a corrupted profile. Reinstalling Thunderbird does not help because the new install uses the old profile. It is a bit of a hassle, but you can rebuild Thunderbird. I do the following (there are probably instructions on Mozilla): locate the TB profile. On my Win7 it is found at OSDrive/users/mycomputername/appdata/roaming/thunderbird/profiles. I save this whole directory in a temp location, then delete it at the orginal location. Deleting is important so TB will create a fresh profile next time. I uninstall TB and reinstall to get a clean copy. The first time you start, TB will ask all the setup questions. It will create a new profile with a different name but at the same location I create my email accounts all over again one at a time. Then I test the email accounts now on this clean profile. Then I move any new emails that downloaded during this test to a temp directory in local folders because I am going to overwrite the inboxes I just created. I close TB. I now go back to the saved copy of the old profile and copy over only my address books and email files. Main address book is “abook.mab” in main profile folder. Copy the one from the saved profile to overwrite the one in the newly created profile. Then I copy over all my email folders. They are in a separate directory for each email account under “mail” in the profile folder. I usually copy only the “Inbox” with no extension, which is where the actually inbox emails are stored and delete the Inbox.msf in the new profile. That is an index that will be rebuilt. Now, when I start TB, I am operating on a clean install with a fresh profile.

Again, this is a bit tedious, but It has saved me when I could not figure out any other things to try.

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Clearing a corrupt profile is a good suggestion.
I also ran into a problem once where a corrupt email in the Inbox plugged up the works. I had to figure out how to delete it but it had disappeared. Right click the folder, Select Properties and click Repair Folder. It reappeared and was then delete-able. (but I had to be careful not to select it for viewing) I’ve occasionally had to Repair the Inbox for some reason.

LLiz – I’d throw up a big red flag if you get an email like that from a service provider. These are usually Phishing emails. You can certain go to your provider and change your password as a precaution but if you did it by following a link in the email, you may have given your password to someone else. I would change your password again but this time, by going directly to your provider. You account may be being used for spamming.

You also may have a corrupt profile, as a later post mentions.

Res: “ping.pop.shaw.ca.com” is meaningless. .ca is equivalent to .com so don’t add it. And you don’t want to put a dot after the command – its not part of the address. “ping pop.shaw.ca” would be more correct. Shaw does use rather weird mail server addressing though.

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Am having similar problems on a client computer. Thunderbird error console reports error 0x8055000a. Tried all the usual stuff (compact mailboxes, replace profile etc). No success.

In Panda Internet Security switched off the Mail Antivirus scanner and bingo. I’ve had similar problems before with AVG. Not sure why the Internet Security is blocking the mail program (this is “wrong” behaviour – it should scan the mail but not block access to the whole server). Anyway I don’t have time to investigate this further right now. Panda was up-to-date with latest patches, upgrades etc and the settings in Panda are so mickey mouse that it’s impossible to diagnose the precise location of the error. I’ve advised the client to change to a less faulty Internet Security system.

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