Thunderbird running but not responding... How do I stop it?

[khinch]

I have downloaded and installed Mozilla Thunderbird, since all my previous archived e-mails from my Windows install are in Tbird format.

After a random number of uses, I get the error message "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."

Well, despite restarting my system multiple times, I still get the message. I looked up the manager with all the running systems, and Thunderbird isn't one of them.

The only way I can get around it, is to delete all the Thunderbird files, reboot the system, and reinstall Thunderbird. Very inconvenient.

Does anyone know what's happening here? or how to stop it?

[Zelmo]

Sounds like the lock file isn't getting deleted when you exit the program. Look in ~/.mozilla-thunderbird/[RANDOM_NUMBER].default/ for a file called lock. (Note that [RANDOM_NUMBER] isn't the literal name of the directory, it represents a random-looking character string that's different for everybody.) If there's a file called lock, delete that and you should be all right.

[khinch]

Thanks! That helped me figure out what was happening. You see, I don't like to lose emails. For the last couple of years I've been using file backup software to archive all my files, including email files. When I put in my email files in a new "Local Folders" file, I deleted the -random number- file after changing the paths in Tbird, which seems to be what was causing it. I only made that link when you mentioned lock file inside the -random number- file.

Sorted, thanks again.

[mtairhead]

This post just appeared when I did a Google search, and I thought I'd add another solution:

I copied my profile from my Windows machine (Application Data\etc\etc) to my Ubutnu machine. I had the same problem, and followed your steps to correct it, to no effect.

I discovered that the problem was actually one of my Thunderbird extensions: Minimize to System Tray (MinimizeToTray ver 0.0.1.2006102615+) was enabled. I uninstalled it, along with Buttons! (ver 0.5.1) and it works fine now.

I guess I should have thought about that before - An extension designed to minimize an app. to the Windows systray probably isn't going to work in Linux *headslap*

~Andrew

[REDjinnee]

as of me using salckware, It happened with me while my machine hanged and I was in hurry so power it off and on, firefox and thunderbird didn't stat..i had to delete two files to get it work under ~/.thurderbird/[somename]/lock 0KB
~/.thurderbird/[somename]/.parentlock 0KB
for firefox i just renamed the ~/.firefox and it worked.