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Thunderbird 'not responding' after sending email

  • 3 replies
  • 3 have this problem
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  • Last reply by christ1

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I've had Thunderbird as my email client for several years, and for the past 3-4 months, it's been very sluggish.

The biggest culprit is after I've sent an email, the program goes "not responsive" for close to a minute. I send 30-50 emails a day, and waiting to use my mail program after every one of them is costing me hours of productivity a week. Plus, it's a huge frustration.

I have read things online that my antivirus may be scanning outgoing mail. I use AVAST and have disabled the Mail Shield feature. I have added exceptions to AVAST such as the Thunderbird folder, the TEMP folder and added the exception */nesmail.html from another post. I also attempted to turn off my firewall within Windows. No luck with any of those solutions.

I realize it's probably an AV issue as it doesn't hang up except after sending mail, or occasionally when saving message in drafts.

I am running Windows 8.1, email provider is Google, set up IMAP. Thunderbird build is 52.1.0 (just downloaded minutes ago)

I've had Thunderbird as my email client for several years, and for the past 3-4 months, it's been very sluggish. The biggest culprit is after I've sent an email, the program goes "not responsive" for close to a minute. I send 30-50 emails a day, and waiting to use my mail program after every one of them is costing me hours of productivity a week. Plus, it's a huge frustration. I have read things online that my antivirus may be scanning outgoing mail. I use AVAST and have disabled the Mail Shield feature. I have added exceptions to AVAST such as the Thunderbird folder, the TEMP folder and added the exception */nesmail.html from another post. I also attempted to turn off my firewall within Windows. No luck with any of those solutions. I realize it's probably an AV issue as it doesn't hang up except after sending mail, or occasionally when saving message in drafts. I am running Windows 8.1, email provider is Google, set up IMAP. Thunderbird build is 52.1.0 (just downloaded minutes ago)

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I have added exceptions to AVAST such as the Thunderbird folder,

There is no point excluding the Thunderbird program folder. You'll need to exclude your profile folder. https://support.mozilla.org/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data

I also attempted to turn off my firewall within Windows.

I think that would be a silly idea.

Wrt Avast see https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing:Antivirus_Related_Performance_Issues#AVAST

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Yeah, I've done all that and it doesn't help. After every email I send, it goes "Not responding" for about 30 seconds still. I don't have any problems receiving email. That comes in within seconds and I can get multiple email messages at once without incident.

My Gmail box is large, 85.4 GB, which is probably the culprit. But I would think that would affect my message receive time, as well as sending time. I have Thunderbird set to compact automatically if it will save 20 MB. I need to keep my old email accessible for legacy search. If there is something I could do there, I'd consider it.

The reason why I turned off my firewall for a minute to test if it was Microsoft's security program that was scanning outgoing messages. The Microsoft Security program is not scanning outgoing messages to my knowledge.

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My Gmail box is large, 85.4 GB

Is that the size of your entire archive?

What's the site of Inbox? What's the size of the Sent folder?

I have Thunderbird set to compact automatically if it will save 20 MB.

You may try to compact folder manually. Right-click a folder - Compact

I'd hope you do have a backup of your entire email archive. If not, create one ASAP.