Thunderbird often hangs. Recovers after 2 or 3 minutes. (McAfee installed)
Often when I boot my PC, or perhaps within 1 hour of boot, Thunderbird hangs. If I click on scroll up/down a few times, the screen grays out. If I wait long enough (perhaps 2 or 3 minutes), Thunderbird resumes operation. I've discovered that if I close Thunderbird and restart Thunderbird (by multiple clicks on the "X", upper right corner of window) a few times, the hang problem usually vanishes. Task manager shows no unusual activity and 0 CPU for Thunderbird when this happens.
Modified by Wayne Mery
All Replies (7)
What is your anti-virus software?
McAfee LifeSafe (Running Windows 10). Thunderbird is the only application with this problem.
jglevyjr,
Does disabling McAfee at tools | addons | extensions help? (please tell us)
Nope (sorry). I even tried removing all McAfee add-ons, disabling all of the McAfee email kinds of checks I could, uninstalled Firefox, re-installed Firefox, re-added the few add-ons normally used but excluded McAfee add-on (McAfee automatically WANTS to be added, but you can remove the request). No change. Note: the freeze problem often happens early in the process of launching Thunderbird, perhaps during the first 5, perhaps 10, minutes of use. Thereafter the problem seldom appears until Firefox is re-launched. I also called McAfee tech support. They removed McAfee and re-installed it. Note: there IS an option in McAfee to minimize CPU utilization if other applications are running. That option had no effect (it reduces security), so returned to the recommended standard setting.
I am learning to really hate McAfee, it has been a problem child about as long as Intel have owned the company. The only product lower in my personal list is Norton.
One of the first things I have learned about anti virus from my time on this board and elsewhere is that anti virus companies play hard and fast with the truth. Statement like "reduces security" it is the truth, but your machine is totally useless as a result. It is the equivalent sometime of having yourself enclosed in a 10' concrete cube. and inserting breathing holes will "reduce security"
McAfee has problems with programs that access the temp folder (but if you do browsing and email that that is really only Thunderbird.) It also has problems with scanning more files than it needs to and it is probably this which is causing you issues.
Thunderbird stores your mail in very large files, sometime up to 4Gb in size, One for each folder you see in Thunderbird. Anti virus programs generally take around 10 minutes per Gb to scan files. So having issues while those files are scanned (Thunderbird touches all of them on startup and downloads of new mail really) is almost inevitable.
As mail is a non executable text file, there is no risk associated with having a virus in an email file, until someone or something tries to do something with it. As Thunderbird does nothing with those text files that is "risky" it is good practice to actually exclude your Thunderbird mail and IMAP mail folders for any anti virus scanning "on access" let the anti virus do it's weekly scan, at a time when you are not using the computer (mine is 3am Thursday)
MCAfee offers instructions on creating such exclusion here https://kc.mcafee.com/corporate/index?page=content&id=KB50998&pmv=print
To get the full path of the Mail and IMAP mail folders.
On the toolbar 
> Help > Troubleshooting information
Select the show profile button.
Click on the Mail and IMAP mail folders in Windows explorer and the path will be shows at the top.
Click into that path to see the notation with \ in it that McAfee will expect you to use.
Modified by Matt
jglevyjr - do you still experience this problem?