Message deletion has prolonged delay intermittently
For at least the past two years, at least once a day and sometimes more often, clicking on the delete button causes Thunderbird to hang for between 30 and 90 seconds. The cursor becomes a spinning circle. I am unable to interact with the program, which gives me a message that Thunderbird is "not responding". After the prolonged delay, the message is deleted, and subsequent message deletions occur instantaneously. This delay does seem to generally (or always) occur on the first deletion of a series after I have checked for new messages. A possible related issue is that occasionally (but much less often than with deletions) there is a prolonged delay when sending a message , where the event bar stops before completion, hangs for up to a minute, and then finishes. I would be grateful for suggestions regarding how to eliminate this frustrating interruption of functionality. I did disable all add-ons and that did not stop the problem. I think I reinstalled Thunderbird last year to see if that would help, but honestly don't recall for certain.
All Replies (9)
two things to try.
- Compact all folders. (alt+F ) > compact folders from the menu. (Compacting reduces the size of files, smaller files usually respond more quickly)
- Check the hard disk for errors. (As an extensive user of hard disk storage and large files Thunderbird is particularly prone if errors do exist)
An gyara daga Matt
I appreciate your response. 1. I compact all folders on a regular basis. 2. My c: drive including Thunderbird is an SSD. Am I correct that it would not be susceptible to errors?
An gyara daga Hank22
All drives of all types and all ages are susceptible to errors. Some physical some logical.
I have no other evidence of SSD failure. It is a Samsung 840 series, and seems to perform all other software well. Besides, it would be difficult to check it for error, I fear. I have read that the test software Samsung Magician can be associated with inability to detect the drive under Windows 10 after the anniversary update. I am reluctant to download it. In effect, I see no other evidence that drive performance is at fault.
Samsung Magician reports drive health status as "Good".
The thing about SSD's is that when you update a page, like adding a new mail, they need to rewrite the entire existing block to a new place. If there are no empty ones it first need to erase a deleted block before it can rewrite (and include the new mail) When you delete from INBOX it has to update INBOX and Trash. So if your INBOX is large it takes time. Using TRIM should help you.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/210492-extremetech-explains-how-do-ssds-work
STILL it shouldn't take 30-90 sec.
Windows 10 is supposed to automatically TRIM a recognized SSD. After a bit of research, I tested with "fsutil behavior query DisableDeleteNotify" in a command prompt. The result is that TRIM is working on my SSD.
As mentioned in the opening post, the delay occurs sporadically, while the rest of the deletions are near instantaneous. To my logic, a hardware malfunction is less likely to produce a sporadic delay of this specific action, than is an issue with the specific software.
Lets examine what happens when you press delete on a message in your inbox.
- Thunderbird edits the message in it's corresponding MBOX file and changes the X-Mozilla-Status: header to "Deleted. That is add the integer 8 IIRC to the existing value.
- The message is added (appended) to the MBOX file for the relevant "move it to this folder" entry.
So we look at the causes of delay, hard disk errors are one relatively common cause. so to is an anti virus program that is busy. Scanning and re-scanning 4Gb mail files (not as uncommon as it should be)
Then their is the horrible penchant windows 10 has of simply freezing for 30 or 40 seconds at a time. I still have not cured that completely.
Then there is the Samsung EVO issues where the drives just got slower and slower over time.
But by far the most common cause is the anti virus (or other disk scanning tool) locking the files.
We have also seen this with streaming backups, shadow copies etc.
I have confirmed that compacting does not prevent the problem. I experienced the hang-up when deleting a message immediately after compacting folders. CPU usage according to Task Manager was 3%.
There are no hard drive errors according to Samsung Magician.
I do not see evidence of a background task, such as anti-virus, that is active at the time.
Again I note that it occurs on a single (usually the first) deletion, and then subsequent deletions are instantaneous. Also, I once recently experienced the hang-up when dragging a message from my inbox to a local folder.
Do you have suggestions for further testing?
An gyara daga Hank22