Fix Slow Or Hanging Thunderbird Email Client

Martin Brinkmann — Tue, 19 May 2009 08:48:37 +0000

Thunderbird is a desktop email client that is seen by many as a viable alternative to Microsoft Outlook on the Windows operating system. Users who use the client heavily might experience slow downs or lags when using the desktop email client after some time. This can usually be attributed to corrupted msf files in the Thundebird profile folder. Thunderbird stores the emails in a file without file extension that is named after the folder name in the email client, for example inbox. Each of these files contain the emails of the specific folder. Each folder has a msf file associated with it that contains an index of all emails in that folder.

The problem is that these indexes can become corrupted over time which causes the slow downs and hangs that some user experience in the email client. The easiest way to fix this problem is to delete the msf files in the Thunderbird profile folder after closing the Thunderbird email client. Thunderbird will automatically rebuild the indexes on its next startup fixing any problems that were caused by these files.

It is of course recommended to backup the Thunderbird profile folder before deleting any files within (Check Backup Email Clients And Web Browsers).

Another possibility is to run a software program like ThunderFix. ThunderFix eliminates most of the hassles associated with the process. It will display a list of Thunderbird profiles that it found on the computer system after execution. All it takes to delete all msf files associated with the profile is to select the profile and click on the Fix Profile link.

It is again recommended to backup the profile before running the software program.

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Fix Slow Or Hanging Thunderbird Email Client