Replies

You could try disabling your add-ons one by one, to see if one is interfering. Another thing that occasionally helps is to read any recent comments on the TBird add-ons page for each add-on, to see if someone else has reported problems. Also try http://forums.mozillazine.org/ to see if others there have run into this. Other than that, I’m stumped.

Added: Better yet, re disabling add-ons, disable all but the Inbox add-on and test that, then re-enable one at a time.

I followed your suggestion and disabled all the add-ons, one at a time. When I disabled FolderPane Tools 0.6.1 then everything started working normally, including Select Inbox 2.5 Now TB opens to the Inbox, as it should. Guess we can assume that FolderPane Tools 0.6.1 is not compatible with TB ver. 31.0 and/or Select Inbox 2.5. Anyway, problem solved. Thanks very much for your help!

Jarome

I just checked my copy of Thunderbird, which updated to 31.0 a few days ago. The Select Inbox ver. 2.5 add-on is still installed and is apparently functioning, as TBird opens (and has been since the update) to the Inbox automatically.

Have you tried re-installing the add-on?

I just tried uninstalling Select Inbox 2.5 and reinstalling it. Still won’t work. I wonder if one of the other add-ons or something else is interfering? Any more suggestions? Thanks.
Jarome

Interesting subject. Here is my experience and procedure which works quite well: I have a Windows 8.1 system including a 256GB SSD with 40GB used up in the OS and data. I have been using Acronis True Image for several years. It is easy to set up and use and has never let me down. It takes about 6 minutes to image my C: drive, including the verification phase. I create a new image every Sunday and Wednesday. This is rather frequent but I have had issues with my SSD completely going blank and disappearing from the BIOS, It appears that everything is still on the SSD but the drive won’t boot and is otherwise inaccessible. Restoring the latest image fixes it. This problem hasn’t happened for about 9 months but I never know when it is going to recur. Recently I installed Macrium Reflect just as a backup for Acronis. I am very impressed with Macrium. It is very easy to use and works perfectly. I use it to create an image every Friday at 6PM on schedule while we are out to eat (always take my wife out to eat every Friday night). Macrium takes about 10 minutes to image the SSD, including verification, slightly longer than Acronis but still very good. All backups are made to a 1TB Western Digital internal drive. I watch the internal backup drive very closely for any signs of instability, lost clusters or mechanical noise, etc. I use Hard Disk Sentinel, which uses the SMART feature to predict the reliability of the drive. If it reports any problems, I immediately replace the drive and recreate new images. I haven’t had a conventional HDD fail in over 5 years. I also run a backup of my critical data files using Acronis every day on schedule at 6:30PM (also backed up to the D: drive). Together with all this, I use Windows 8.1’s File History to back up my data. This keeps a more-or-less continuous backup of my critical data files. I recommend using it. Incidentally, both Acronis and Macrium took over an hour and a half to run the image backups over a local network to a NAS drive. This is much too long and backing up to a local internal drive (6 to 10 minutes) is certainly the way to go. One last comment: if you install either Acronis or Macrium on your C: drive and decide you want to uninstall them later after creating a boot rescue disk ( which I highly recommend), just use Revo Uninstaller. It does a better job than the Windows uninstaller and will get rid of all remnants of a program including registry entries. Hope these ideas and suggestions will be of some help in making backup decisions.

Cheers,
Jarome

Good information, CLiNT. Thanks for passing it along. My SSD is now perfectly aligned and optimized and I am a happy camper!

Jarome

CLiNT,
I ran WinSAT. It checks a lot of things in the computer to come up with a Windows Experience Index score (WEI). As far as I can tell it, doesn’t change or optimize anything. The WEI is not displayed in Windows 8.1 so you don’t know what it is. Therefore, what good is it?

Thanks,
Jarome

SUCCESS!! I tried the Paragon alignment tool again, thinking I had missed a step somewhere, but it still failed to align the SSD. I then tried the Gparted tool, following the link Paul suggested. It aligned the SSD on the first try with no problems. Quite a nice tool and definitely one to keep in your tool box. Thanks Paul and satrow for your help.

cheers,
Jarome

Device Manager shows no errors. Downloaded memtest86 and running it now. Has been running for 15 minutes and shows no memory errors so far. Will let it run to completion. Thanks for alerting me to it. Looks like a good utility. Still looking for the solution. I did try boot mode set to “legacy”. It was set to “UEFI and Legacy” in the BIOS setup. Made no difference.

Thanks,
Jarome

Here is what I have tried: Downloaded the latest BIOS. No difference. Ran chkdsk.exe, sfc /scannow and WMD (windows memory diagnostic). Found nothing. Decided to do a REFRESH to replace any corrupted or missing system files. It started, but then stopped with the error 0xc000000e – “A required device isn’t connected or can’t be accessed”. Then I decided to start from scratch and reinstall Windows 8 from the installation disc. It got to about the same place that Windows 8.1 failed and displayed the exact same message: “Windows 8 installation has failed” and would not let me reinstall Windows 8. I think it must be a basic hardware problem but I have no idea of how to find it. Does anyone know of a good diagnostic tool that might help? Right now I am running Malwarebytes in case it could be a virus or other malware. I will post the results.

Thanks,
Jarome

I concur that it looks like a driver issue, but the latest Intel driver didn’t help. I think my next plan is to install a good video card and disable the Intel HD Graphics chip in the CPU. Any suggestions on a good video card (Nvidea or ATI)? I am not a gamer so a high-end card is not needed. The latest Windows 8.1 driver is of course a necessity.

Thanks,
Jarome

Yes, I tried several resolutions but the problem is still there – blank screen. I returned it to the monitor’s recommended resolution which is 1920×1080. I borrowed a friend’s monitor which has a DVI connection and that worked fine. Unfortunately, my monitor only has HDMI (2) and VGA. VGA is not quite as sharp as DVI or HDMI but is pretty close as far as my eyes can tell. Until I can find the problem with HDMI, it will work fine. Is threre any other disadvantage to using VGA?

Thanks,
Jarome

I downloaded the latest video driver from the Intel download site, but it made no difference. I think the HDMI port is working because I can see everything on the monitor until Windows 8.1 starts to load then the screen goes blank. I have to change over to the VGA connector to see what is on the screen. I had rather use the HDMI connection but looks like I am stuck with VGA. Also this problem did not happen in Windows 8, only after I upgraded to 8.1. Again, HDMI was working fine with Windows 8. Anymore suggestions I can try?

Thanks,
Jarome

Thanks CLiNT. I got the 8.1 dummy key where you suggested and it worked fine and finally got 8.1 installed but had to use the original 8 key to activate 8.1. It worked fine and now I am running 8.1 but ran into another problem: When 8.1 starts my monitor screen goes blank. Had to change from HDMI to VGA to get a display. Looks like 8.1 will not support HDMI. I tried to update my Intel video driver but Device Manager said I had the latest driver. [/I]Have you heard of this problem?

Thanks again,
Jarome

Thanks for your suggestions. Good advice, which I shall follow.

Jarome

When I sign into SD using my Microsoft Account credentials I see my computer name under “PCs”, but this is the SD account I want to keep so I can’t use “disconnect PC from SkyDrive” as you suggest. If I sign in with my Oulook.com credentials, there are no computers listed under “PCs” so I can’t use “disconnect PC from SkyDrive”. There is only one local SD folder on the desktop so I assume this is the SD account I want to keep. I have also discovered I have two Outlook.com email accounts, one for each account. If I log into Outlook.com with my Microsoft Account credentials I get an entirely different Outlook.com email account. I only want one Outlook.com account! It looks like if you have a Microsoft Account you automatically get an Outlook.com account and you also get a SD account and end up with two accounts for each. I hope this makes sense, it is very confusing to me to have all these accounts which I don’t want or need. I think the best solution is to dump them all and use gmail and google drive.

Thanks for your help,
Jarome

Problem solved! I first tried sharing the Backup drive I wanted to use with File History. No change. File History did not list it in available drives. I checked the Backup drive on my wife’s computer where File History was running normally and listed all available drives. That drive was NOT shared so I knew that was not the problem. Following rmonroe36’s link I learned that any folders on the Backup drive could NOT be included in a Library. I did not know this and don’t remember Fred Langa mentioning this important point in his fine article. I DID find 4 folders on the Backup drive which were included in a Library. I removed them from the Library, but still no luck. Rebooting the computer did not help. Then for some reason I turned OFF File History and then turned it back ON. Guess what! The missing drive was now listed in the available drives list. I selected it and everything works fine! Thanks to rmonroe36 and rlfvt for your great help. I think we all learned something.

Jarome