stuck in Thunderbird "restart to upgrade" doom loop and can no longer use it
For the past 3 days, I've been locked out of using Thunderbird email. When I try to open it, I get a "Your computer must be restarted to complete a previous upgrade of Thunderbird. Do you want to restart now ?" "Yes/No" option pop-up.
This is infuriating. After several hours, I'm still no closer to being able to use Thunderbird again.
If I choose to restart, nothing changes and I just get the doom loop pop-up again.
If I install uninstall (via Windows Control Panel), again I get stuck with the "Your computer must be restarted to complete a previous upgrade of Thunderbird. Do you want to restart now ?" message.
I can find no useful advice in the Thunderbird help and forums. It's recorded as a known issue. But no viable solutions found.
Using Windows 10. Looks like Thunderbird tried to update to 115.16.2 on 28-Oct-24 (not something I requested).
Please let me know how I can fix it.
And do something to fix this bug (which is a shocker).
Chosen solution
OK, so I renamed the existing Thunderbird installation. And then installed a new version. Which did install since this had somehow broken the update lock.
I'm not sure if deleting this file was actually required to do this (I think not):
C:\Users\peter\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<my profile string - always 8 characters>.default-release\parent.lock
Seems to have had some minor side effects (some email send/receive settings seem corrupted). But nothing too serious. The original email is still there.
Seriously, if the answer can be that simple, how is it so hard and so slow to find it here ?
Read this answer in context 👍 0All Replies (5)
Do you still have this issue if you restart your computer in safe mode with networking?
These reboots are to replace a file that is "locked" at the time of an upgrade. If other software, like your antivirus is the thing doing the "locking" then a reboot in safe mode will bypass that and the update can complete.
No. This didn't help at all.
I restarted in Safe Mode with Networking. Opened Thunderbird. Which still wanted me to restart. So I did. Same problem when it restarted.
Did I do that right ?
What is the locked file ? Can't I just delete it ? Or unlock it in some way ? Or delete my Thunderbird installation ?
Surely there must be a simple, reliable way to do this. There are plenty of reports of people having this problem. Over several years.
Give me strength. This sort of nonsense would never happen on Linux. And would be easily fixable.
Actually you might want to talk to those using Ubuntu before you say this would never happen on Linux, their adoption of a sandboxed builds of all application software means lots of things are just a mess with disk access being limited.
As for Thunderbird in your scenario I have no idea what file can not be accessed or updated. Perhaps follow the process in this topic at reddit to get a log. https://www.reddit.com/r/Thunderbird/comments/x0nbsi/thunderbird_keeps_telling_me_to_update_on_latest/?rdt=57553
Chosen Solution
OK, so I renamed the existing Thunderbird installation. And then installed a new version. Which did install since this had somehow broken the update lock.
I'm not sure if deleting this file was actually required to do this (I think not):
C:\Users\peter\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<my profile string - always 8 characters>.default-release\parent.lock
Seems to have had some minor side effects (some email send/receive settings seem corrupted). But nothing too serious. The original email is still there.
Seriously, if the answer can be that simple, how is it so hard and so slow to find it here ?
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