Slow Thunderbird performance using SSD (win7)
Thunderbird 52.6.0, Add-ons: Crrect Identiy, MarkSubfolders New, NoGlass
I'm one of those who have converted from Eudora to Thunderbird. I've now been running Thunderbird for a few months, and while I've worked out most of the kinks, I'm struggling with responsiveness. Thunderbird is running on a SSD drive. I've moved the email folders to a separate (also SSD) drive.
I have 4 email accounts set up. All of them dump email back into the Local folders and maintain no folders of their own. My Local Inbox is typically about 20 messages. Folderwise I have hundreds of folders, totaling about 112 MB. (pruned down from ~200 mb to effect).
Eudora handled this environment with zero problems. Snappy response opening folders and emails, with message view being virtually instant. In Thunderbird double-clicking on an email to open it (or with the Message page) takes seconds to open.
I don't understand why. Looking just at my InBox. the Inbox file is 172k. Each time I select a message in the inbox, it takes a few seconds for the message to select, and then appear in the preview pane (or open). If I disable the message pane, messages select quickly, but still take seconds to open. It's painful. Messages that are small or big. If I had to guess, it's the parsing engine that looks through the (172k) file, and then displays the appropriate section. But there has to be a way to improve this.
Modified by Wayne Mery
All Replies (3)
I have also run the "Repair Folder" function (to fix corrupt msfs) with no discernible impact.
Because you have it on a separate drive there are several possible issues:
1. ensure that your AV has exclusions set to not scan the thunderbird profile directories, AND exclude the Thunderbird application program
2. ensure that Windows is set to NOT index files in the thunderbird profile directory
Please post your results.
If you still have trouble, please look at https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird:Testing:Memory_Usage_Problems and post your results
For purposes of this testing, I have disabled all AV, including Windows Defender.
Looking at the Windows Indexing Options, the list of Included Locations does not include the location of the mail files (E:\TBird). .MSF and .SBD files are also not included as File Types under the Advanced Options. The Folders Properties also don't have the "Archive and Index attributes" selected.
Additional notes from the link: Not using IMAP anywhere. panacea.dat is 178k Filter logging disabled MS-Windows Integrated Search in Thunderbird settings is not enabled. Disabling Global Indexer does not appear to improve performance.
True whether I just started FF or waited a half hour (or many hours)
Note I have a very specific problem - selecting a message in the inbox (or other mail folders that are also small) and having it display in the message pane. Disabling the message pane makes them select quickly (and then I have to open them).