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« Wiki chapter and cover || Back to Blog | Somalia bombing - more than meets the eye (and meets the media) » January 09, 2007
Lately, Thunderbird (1.5.0.9) has been hanging when I try to open particular folders. Eventually, it crashes. I think I know why, and I seem to have fixed it, but please note that I am an incompetent Thunderbird repairperson. I don't know what I'm doing. Following in my footsteps is likely to bring you to wrack, if not to actual ruin. Are we clear on the disclosure? Good. So, I noticed that the hanging folders had .msf files that were zero-length. I believe the msf folders contain the metadata about the display of the contents of the folders. I believe they do not contain the actual messages. So, I deleted them and restarted Thunderbird, forcing Thunderbird to rebuild the metadata. If you're an XP user, you'll find your msf files, and the rest of the contents associated with your Thunderbird profile, at C:\Documents and Settings\User_Name\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles\Jibber_Jabber\Mail\ (where User_Name=your user name and Jibber_Jabber=a random string Thunderbird generates). It seems to have worked. And if you try it, it's likely to cause your computer to fuse its solenoids or display only unsolvable Sudoku puzzles. [Tags: thunderbird msf ] Posted
by D. Weinberger at January 9, 2007 10:40 AM
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Comments
Yeah, deleting the msf files is always a good first step when Thunderbird starts misbehaving. Just be sure to do it after you've closed it! You also have to remember to select the associated folder to rebuild the msf files, otherwise it won't rebuild them and you won't notice if new mail gets filtered in there.
Posted by: Jonathan | January 9, 2007 12:16 PM
I've been running this version of T-bird for some time now when I upgraded from my previous version. I have had two crashes but largely due to rushing commands when my IMAP account is slow or a large file is involved.
Not the problem you described.
Posted by: Charlie Green | January 9, 2007 05:27 PM
Unfortunately this didn't solve my problem. I believe it's a permissions issue - I've got one profile set up to use another user's mailbox.
Fiddling with permissions didn't solve it.. I'll just log in as that user. =)
Posted by: Sy Ali | March 12, 2007 07:15 PM