Lately my machine has been crunching away for reasons previously unknown.

I asked on the Windows newsgroup and they suggested running Memory Hogs.
https://www.ghacks.net/2017/01/23/memory-hogs/
http://michaels-tech-notes.info/software-database/
https://www.michaels-tech-notes.info/app/download/3888974/MemoryHogs.exe

It turns out, at least so far, that Thunderbird is likely what's hanging.
https://i.postimg.cc/sg6DpCc9/hung.jpg

The problem now is I don't know how to debug WHY Thunderbird is hanging.
What would you do next if you found out it was Thunderbird hanging the CPU?

mike wrote on 2/8/2023 12:23 AM:
> Lately my machine has been crunching away for reasons previously unknown.
>
> I asked on the Windows newsgroup and they suggested running Memory Hogs.
> https://www.ghacks.net/2017/01/23/memory-hogs/
> http://michaels-tech-notes.info/software-database/
> https://www.michaels-tech-notes.info/app/download/3888974/MemoryHogs.exe
>
> It turns out, at least so far, that Thunderbird is likely what's hanging.
> https://i.postimg.cc/sg6DpCc9/hung.jpg
>
> The problem now is I don't know how to debug WHY Thunderbird is hanging.
> What would you do next if you found out it was Thunderbird hanging the
> CPU?

I use the portable version of Thunderbird for my email. I haven't had
any of that problem for years.

A portable Thunderbird is self-contained in a folder. It won't interfere
with your existing installed version of Thunderbird. You can set up a
folder containing the portable Thunderbird and make multiple copies of
it, and they will coexist without knowing the presence of the other
copies existing in the same computer.

So you can download portable Thunderbird and input all you email
accounts. Use it for a few months before you uninstall your existing
installed version of Thunderbird.

Portable Thunderbird:

https://portableapps.com/apps/internet/thunderbird_portable

On 8.2.2023 11:16, <@.> wrote:

> I use the portable version of Thunderbird for my email. I haven't had
> any of that problem for years.

I'm more interested in debugging Thunderbird since it must work.
There's something wrong with TB 91.5.0 - but I don't know what.

It's the debugging help that I need more than a workaround right now.

To be honest, with respect to your suggestion, ever since portable apps
came out, I could never understand why people use portable apps over the
installed apps (for their own machines) - or vice versa for that matter.

I don't know what a portable app does on your personal machine that a
normally installed app doesn't do that matters in terms of CPU hanging.

Anyway, I installed another debugger which confirms it's Thunderbird
hanging but I still need more Win10 debugging advice to figure out why.
https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/what_is_hang.html

Here is a screen shot of the Nirsoft WhatIsHang reporting TB hanging too.
https://i.postimg.cc/Vsg7ShQL/tbhung.jpg

mike wrote on 2/8/2023 1:17 AM:
> On 8.2.2023 11:16,  <@.> wrote:
>
>> I use the portable version of Thunderbird for my email. I haven't had
>> any of that problem for years.
>
> I'm more interested in debugging Thunderbird since it must work.
> There's something wrong with TB 91.5.0 - but I don't know what.
>
> It's the debugging help that I need more than a workaround right now.
>
> To be honest, with respect to your suggestion, ever since portable apps
> came out, I could never understand why people use portable apps over the
> installed apps (for their own machines) - or vice versa for that matter.
>

I always use the version of software that doesn't require installation,
if I can find the portable version of course. The advantage of a
portable app is that everything is self contained in the folder. The
same app in the folder can work immediately when moved to another
computer (that's why it is called "portable"). That means, in case of
Thunderbird, all your emails are also stored in the container folder.

In case of portable browsers like portable Firefox or portable Chrome,
you can make multiple copies of the portable browser app on the same
Windows desktop, and reserve one as the dedicated browser for your
internet banking, for example, so you don't have to worry about your
login credentials being stolen by other websites you frequent using the
same browser.

> I don't know what a portable app does on your personal machine that a
> normally installed app doesn't do that matters in terms of CPU hanging.
>
> Anyway, I installed another debugger which confirms it's Thunderbird
> hanging but I still need more Win10 debugging advice to figure out why.
> https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/what_is_hang.html
>
> Here is a screen shot of the Nirsoft WhatIsHang reporting TB hanging too.
> https://i.postimg.cc/Vsg7ShQL/tbhung.jpg

On 2/8/2023 1:17 AM, mike wrote:
> On 8.2.2023 11:16,  <@.> wrote:
>
>> I use the portable version of Thunderbird for my email. I haven't had any of that problem for years.
>
> I'm more interested in debugging Thunderbird since it must work.
> There's something wrong with TB 91.5.0 - but I don't know what.
>
> It's the debugging help that I need more than a workaround right now.
>
> To be honest, with respect to your suggestion, ever since portable apps
> came out, I could never understand why people use portable apps over the
> installed apps (for their own machines) - or vice versa for that matter.
>
> I don't know what a portable app does on your personal machine that a
> normally installed app doesn't do that matters in terms of CPU hanging.
>
> Anyway, I installed another debugger which confirms it's Thunderbird
> hanging but I still need more Win10 debugging advice to figure out why.
> https://www.nirsoft.net/utils/what_is_hang.html
>
> Here is a screen shot of the Nirsoft WhatIsHang reporting TB hanging too.
> https://i.postimg.cc/Vsg7ShQL/tbhung.jpg

If you run Process Explorer as Administrator, you can
sometimes get a little more info. This is because, as "user",
there are some parts of the process monitoring interface
that need elevation to access. And "instrumenting" someone elses
process likely requires admin.

[Picture]

https://i.postimg.cc/hj2Fx7Nj/Process-Explorer-As-Administrator.gif

The "busy cursor" or the graying out of a program and presentation
of "Not responding", may indicate the main event loop is hung. It is
not processing events. The time stamp on the event indicates the
event is "stale" and "old".

When you run Visual Studio, and you ask it to make a program prototype,
if you tell Visual Studio you're making a graphics (windowed) program,
it gives you the shell of a program. The code plopped down, does the
necessary things. One of the things you see in there, is an event loop.
It checks to see if any events have been forwarded to it by the OS.
One would be a "refresh display" event, like if the window needed to be
redrawn. If the program refused to redraw the screen, then it could
be considered to be "hung" because the Event loop has not "eaten" that
event and dealt with it. Modern Windows does not need "refresh" nearly
as often, because compositing keeps a copy of the program window and
freshly exposed bits are cached for convenience. But there will be
some events, which require the Thunderbird window to be redrawn,
so compositing merely reduces the redraw load on the system. And besides,
"all OSes do compositing", so why shouldn't Windows ?

When you view the above picture, one thing you have to remember, is
what shows on the stack, is a function of how the program execution
is halted long enough to take such a snapshot. This means, for some
programs, you are shown an "artificial" situation. You will find the
frequency of certain software names is way too high when viewed that way.
The "snapshot" function has to wait until the program is in a state
where it can be analyzed and this can leave a false impression of
what is going on. This might be referred to as "sampling pollution",
or Heisenburg Uncertainty, where the act of measuring upsets the
thing being measured.

Thunderbird is a heavily threaded program, and prides itself on
evaluating news groups out of display order. Even though the news
server limits the number of connections, so you cannot actually
check for new articles in 20 newsgroups at the same time. Thunderbird
did not always do this. Around version 2 or so, it processed newsgroups
in linear order. Heavily threaded does not equal "Hung". Software
on a computer can "deadlock", but there is *no* state on the screen
for deadlock. For example, when GIMP starts, and the initialization
screen stops updating (it's "jammed"), Memory Hogs would not show "hung",
because the main event loop of Thunderbird is already running and
it is handling redraw requests for the initialization dialog. Sometimes,
just the act of starting Task Manager, breaks a "deadlock" but we don't
know why exactly.

*******

Actual debugging tools are Windbg and gdb. Windbg works on things
compiled and built with the Visual Studio compiler and linker. GDB
works with things built using the GNU compiler collective. The object
code is different enough, there are two separate tools. You
may find references to "Debugging Tools For Windows" on some (very large)
DVD as a thing to acquire. Fortunately, the interface on the installer,
you can tick a single item, and for that one, it downloads about
150MB of stuff. You don't need the other 9GB of downloads.

With Windbg, you can start a program and then Windbg is "attached"
to the program. The Windbg window tells you about a single command
you can type, to show the current program state (stack). And that
may bear some resemblance to one of the entries in that Process Explorer
window.

If you build Thunderbird using Visual Studio, you can single step
execution. And, the *source files* open on the screen, to the
line you are currently at. This means, you can follow execution
at the source level, visually, on the screen. I have done that
with Firefox (debug buiid in VS), but it just about killed me :-)
And today, with Quantum, I wouldn't waste my time even trying any more.
Moving to multiple processes means "past my payscale". It is bad enough
single stepping programs, let alone juggling 7 processes too. I'm at the
level I can barely get these stupid things running, so don't ask
me any questions.

Paul

On Wed, 8 Feb 2023 10:53:52 +0530, mike wrote:

> Lately my machine has been crunching away for reasons previously unknown.
>
> I asked on the Windows newsgroup and they suggested running Memory Hogs.
> https://www.ghacks.net/2017/01/23/memory-hogs/
> http://michaels-tech-notes.info/software-database/
> https://www.michaels-tech-notes.info/app/download/3888974/MemoryHogs.exe
>
> It turns out, at least so far, that Thunderbird is likely what's hanging.
> https://i.postimg.cc/sg6DpCc9/hung.jpg
>
> The problem now is I don't know how to debug WHY Thunderbird is hanging.
> What would you do next if you found out it was Thunderbird hanging the CPU?

For email there are alternatives - use the web interface on your
browser. If you really want to download email and save locally -
rather than use IMAP - try using Alpine as an alternative to
Thunderbird. You want to read the mail rather than debug the heap of
junk that Thunderbird turned into some time ago. There are better
things to do with your life!

On 08-02-2023 05:51 Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:

> If you run Process Explorer as Administrator, you can
> sometimes get a little more info.

Thanks for that advice. I'll try that because what I want to do is find out
WHY Thunderbird is hanging now that I know it's Thunderbird that's hanging.
https://i.postimg.cc/Vsg7ShQL/tbhung.jpg

One question I have is what is a "hidden process", which is a switch I had
to manually turn on in the suggested Memory Hogs program.

Memory Hogs Show Hidden Processes = off by default (I turned it on)

mike <this@address.is.invalid> wrote:

> Lately my machine has been crunching away for reasons previously
> unknown.
>
> I asked on the Windows newsgroup and they suggested running Memory
> Hogs.
> https://www.ghacks.net/2017/01/23/memory-hogs/
> http://michaels-tech-notes.info/software-database/
> https://www.michaels-tech-notes.info/app/download/3888974/MemoryHogs.exe
>
> It turns out, at least so far, that Thunderbird is likely what's
> hanging.
> https://i.postimg.cc/sg6DpCc9/hung.jpg
>
> The problem now is I don't know how to debug WHY Thunderbird is
> hanging. What would you do next if you found out it was Thunderbird
> hanging the CPU?

Disable all add-ons in Thunderbird, exit, reload, and retest.

Disable anti-virus scanning of both incoming and outgoing e-mail
traffic. It is superfluous, anyway.

Use a default profile to eliminate any tweaking to settings.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-thunderbird-profiles

On 09-02-2023 00:30 VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:

> Disable all add-ons in Thunderbird, exit, reload, and retest.

Thanks for that advice.
As a matter of principle, I don't ever use addons or plugins in anything.
Not Firefox. Not Thunderbird. Not Chrome. Nothing.

Well, I recently had to add the Irfanview plugins.
But there are no addons or plugins that I've added to FF or TB.

> Disable anti-virus scanning of both incoming and outgoing e-mail
> traffic. It is superfluous, anyway.

I have the Windows Defender anti virus.
Is it scanning my incoming/outgoing email?

How would I know?

> Use a default profile to eliminate any tweaking to settings.
> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-thunderbird-profiles

I don't think I've "tweaked" any settings other than by the menus.
Why would Thunderbird hang just because I set it up how I like it?

My more important question is to find a Windows debugging tool that will
tell me what is it in Thunderbird that is causing it to hang.

Do you know what debugging to perform after WhatIsHanged tells you this?
https://i.postimg.cc/Vsg7ShQL/tbhung.jpg

On 2023-02-08 20:11, mike wrote:
> On 09-02-2023 00:30 VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:
>
>> Disable all add-ons in Thunderbird, exit, reload, and retest.
>
> Thanks for that advice.
> As a matter of principle, I don't ever use addons or plugins in anything.
> Not Firefox. Not Thunderbird. Not Chrome. Nothing.
>
> Well, I recently had to add the Irfanview plugins.
> But there are no addons or plugins that I've added to FF or TB.
>
>> Disable anti-virus scanning of both incoming and outgoing e-mail
>> traffic.  It is superfluous, anyway.
>
> I have the Windows Defender anti virus. Is it scanning my
> incoming/outgoing email?
>
> How would I know?
>
>> Use a default profile to eliminate any tweaking to settings.
>> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-thunderbird-profiles
>
> I don't think I've "tweaked" any settings other than by the menus.
> Why would Thunderbird hang just because I set it up how I like it?

How you like it might happen to be a combination that the thing was not
tested for, and gets to some hang condition.

For example, once I told Th to scan content and index it. After a few
days of full CPU, I had to disable it.

>
> My more important question is to find a Windows debugging tool that will
> tell me what is it in Thunderbird that is causing it to hang.
>
> Do you know what debugging to perform after WhatIsHanged tells you this?
> https://i.postimg.cc/Vsg7ShQL/tbhung.jpg

Ah, that's interesting. I don't know how to do this in Windows, but a
developer should be able to get the name of the library call in
question, and perhaps the traceback to that point. That data allows to
report a bug, and possibly to avoid the hang by "doing something specific".

--
Cheers, Carlos.

mike <this@address.is.invalid> wrote:

> VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:
>
>> Disable anti-virus scanning of both incoming and outgoing e-mail
>> traffic. It is superfluous, anyway.
>
> I have the Windows Defender anti virus.
> Is it scanning my incoming/outgoing email?

No. E-mail scanning is superfluous. There no more pest detection with
or without e-mail traffic scanning. Whenever a file is created, like
saving an e-mail, or detaching an attached file (which is a MIME part
inside the body of the e-mail), the on-demand (real-time) AV scanner
gets used, the same one used to interrogate the e-mail traffic. E-mail
scanning will sooner detect malware, but not afford more detection than
the on-access scanner. All e-mail AV scanning does is delay delivery of
the e-mail traffic to the client or to the server possibly causing
timeouts.

>> Use a default profile to eliminate any tweaking to settings.
>> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-thunderbird-profiles
>
> I don't think I've "tweaked" any settings other than by the menus.
> Why would Thunderbird hang just because I set it up how I like it?

There are a *TON* of settings not just in the GUI wizard screens, but
also in about:config, many of which have to do with performance and
security.

> My more important question is to find a Windows debugging tool that will
> tell me what is it in Thunderbird that is causing it to hang.
>
> Do you know what debugging to perform after WhatIsHanged tells you this?
> https://i.postimg.cc/Vsg7ShQL/tbhung.jpg

The problem with "hung" status is how is it measured. If it is based on
read/write OPs, the program may not be doing any read or write I/O. It
could be based on CPU cycles, but a program that is buffering a huge
stream of data may not consume much CPU. For example, I have a tool to
convert MPEG files to MP4, and at times the OS thinks the program is not
responding. It is buffering, and doesn't need any interaction. The
converter still completes okay, but periodically the OS will change the
title bar to note "(Not Responding)". A program hanging in a single
system call could be doing a huge data transfer: little or no CPU
overhead, but the data bus is damn busy.

Those tools show you the appearance from the outside. They aren't
tracing through code execution to tell you where the code is slow,
performing huge file transfers, or other artifacts. Even if you used a
code debugger, you're not the dev, so you won't be fixing anything.

Use the webmail client to your e-mail account. Check the sizes of
messages sitting in your Inbox (if using POP) or in all folders (if
using IMAP). Perhaps you have a huge message, or one with huge
attachments, that causes a long lag in retrieval (data transfer). The
client gets busy trying to sync on a message. In fact, if you poll your
mail server at, say, 5 minute intervals, a huge message could take
longer to retrieve than 5 minutes. Then, during the message retrieval,
it gets aborted with the next mail poll that tries to re-retrieve the
same message. Your choice would be to read the huge message using the
webmail client, and delete it (or remove its huge attachments), or
delete the message whether you read it or not. Someone sending you a
video of their vacation is inappropriately using e-mail as a file
transfer mechanism. They should send you a URL to the file they
uploaded somewhere. You never get the full downstream bandwidth of your
Internet when using e-mail. Mail servers will throttle bandwidth per
connection, so all connections get some. E-mail servers are *not* a
proper means of transferring files, but lots of folks still do it
because they can. So, use the webmail client to see what is up on the
server to which your client is trying to sync. Get rid of or prune down
the huge e-mails. Also, up the polling interval of your e-mail client.
That other e-mails arrive within 10 minutes doesn't mean you've managed
to read in 10 minutes what was previously downloaded. 5 minutes is
often too short a polling interval. Anything less is rude to the e-mail
provider keeping them busy to check on new messages that aren't there.

Another user suggested Tbird's safe mode. Yes, it disables any add-ons,
but I'm not sure it removes any tweaks in settings. It may default some
common settings, but not all. I ran into that with Firefox. A default
profile (after a reset of FF) did /not/ eliminate all tweaks that I made
in FF, especially those performed in about:config which were not exposed
in GUI wizard config screens. A default profile starts fresh. Safe
Mode is not as clean.

Thunderbird is written using multiple programming languages: C, C++,
Javascript, CSS, Rust, etc. You'd need a debugging tool for each on the
pieces of code that uses a particular language to do breakpoints, etc.
That means getting all the code for Thunderbird.

If using a default Tbird profile doesn't help, and the other suggestions
don't help, I'd look into submitting a ticket to bugzilla.mozilla.org on
Tbird. To do the debugging would have to doing the dev's work, and I'm
not sure your are into that level of debugging.

mike <this@address.is.invalid> wrote:

> On 09-02-2023 00:30 VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:
>
>> Disable all add-ons in Thunderbird, exit, reload, and retest.
>
> Thanks for that advice.
> As a matter of principle, I don't ever use addons or plugins in anything.
> Not Firefox. Not Thunderbird. Not Chrome. Nothing.
>
> Well, I recently had to add the Irfanview plugins.
> But there are no addons or plugins that I've added to FF or TB.
>
>> Disable anti-virus scanning of both incoming and outgoing e-mail
>> traffic. It is superfluous, anyway.
>
> I have the Windows Defender anti virus.
> Is it scanning my incoming/outgoing email?
>
> How would I know?
>
>> Use a default profile to eliminate any tweaking to settings.
>> https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-thunderbird-profiles
>
> I don't think I've "tweaked" any settings other than by the menus.
> Why would Thunderbird hang just because I set it up how I like it?
>
> My more important question is to find a Windows debugging tool that will
> tell me what is it in Thunderbird that is causing it to hang.
>
> Do you know what debugging to perform after WhatIsHanged tells you this?
> https://i.postimg.cc/Vsg7ShQL/tbhung.jpg

From your snapshot pics, the Window Title pane in WhatisHange shows:

Chinese spy balloon? - Mozilla Thunderbird
Inbox - Mozilla Thunderbird

You are trying to read a message titled "Chinese spy balloon?" No idea
who sent you that message, or its content, but have you changed the
configuration of Tbird to allow Javascript to run when viewing
HTML-formatted e-mails? Scripts in e-mail should NEVER be allowed to
run.

Tbird has the option to view an HTML-formatted e-mail using Firefox (in
a tab in Tbird or outside in FF). That likely allows running scripts.
No one should be sending a copy of a web page as an e-mail message.
E-mail clients are /not/ web browser. Besides attachments, scripts in
e-mails is another strong infection vector.

I thought Thunderbird disabled Javascripting, by default, but I don't
know if there is an override possibly in the GUI config screens or in
about:config.

Have you tried using the webmail client to your account to delete not
just any huge e-mails but also any with scripts? Read them online,
delete them, then test if Tbird works okay.

On 2023-02-08 20:54, VanguardLH wrote:
> mike <this@address.is.invalid> wrote:
>
>> VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:
>>
>>> Disable anti-virus scanning of both incoming and outgoing e-mail
>>> traffic. It is superfluous, anyway.
>>
>> I have the Windows Defender anti virus.
>> Is it scanning my incoming/outgoing email?
>
> No. E-mail scanning is superfluous. There no more pest detection with
> or without e-mail traffic scanning. Whenever a file is created, like
> saving an e-mail, or detaching an attached file (which is a MIME part
> inside the body of the e-mail), the on-demand (real-time) AV scanner
> gets used, the same one used to interrogate the e-mail traffic. E-mail
> scanning will sooner detect malware, but not afford more detection than
> the on-access scanner. All e-mail AV scanning does is delay delivery of
> the e-mail traffic to the client or to the server possibly causing
> timeouts.

Email scanning is better done at the mail server, and works very well.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

On 2023-02-08 21:12, VanguardLH wrote:
> mike <this@address.is.invalid> wrote:
>> On 09-02-2023 00:30 VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:

....

> I thought Thunderbird disabled Javascripting, by default, but I don't
> know if there is an override possibly in the GUI config screens or in
> about:config.

Javascript is a requirement for Oauth2. At least it was at some point,
no idea if this has changed.

--
Cheers, Carlos.

VanguardLH wrote:

> I thought Thunderbird disabled Javascripting, by default, but I don't
> know if there is an override possibly in the GUI config screens or in
> about:config.

it will never run javascript that is within an email message, but yes
it's allowed within the chrome, I had manually disabled it and that
didn't allow oAuth2 to work until I re-enabled it.

On 2/8/2023 12:20 PM, mike wrote:
> On 08-02-2023 05:51 Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
>
>> If you run Process Explorer as Administrator, you can
>> sometimes get a little more info.
>
> Thanks for that advice. I'll try that because what I want to do is find out
> WHY Thunderbird is hanging now that I know it's Thunderbird that's hanging.
> https://i.postimg.cc/Vsg7ShQL/tbhung.jpg
>
> One question I have is what is a "hidden process", which is a switch I had
> to manually turn on in the suggested Memory Hogs program.
>
> Memory Hogs Show Hidden Processes = off by default (I turned it on)

There is a "Suspended" process. The image remains in memory,
but the thing does not receive time slices. The inventor of this
idea, thinks that the process can "start faster" this way. But
we don't know, during the current session, whether it will ever
start again or not.

There is a "Zombie" process. As far as I know, Windows still
has such a status. Any process which is being "harvested" (has
been killed), but the resource recovery is not finished, is
a Zombie. A Zombie still has a Process ID, and still takes
space in some tables. When something becomes a Zombie, it is
a "failure to clean up" that caused it. Like any OS, a reboot
removes this.

Windows allows poorly-formed processes to exist. I have
seen processes without a name. I have seen processes with
"improbable parents". There are a number of properties Windows
should just not allow. It is pretty hard for me to guess,
what the bounds of this behavior are and how bad it can get.

When you run a Process Status tool as an Administrator, nothing
should be hidden from you. Maybe on Windows 7, you might have
noticed Task Manager started as "User", but a click of a button
made it run as "Administrator", and suddenly the list of processes
became much larger. The intent is, an "unelevated" Task Manager,
should not really invade the privacy of other users on the machine.
Once it runs as Administrator, everything should be visible.

Consequently, I don't really know how to handle a claim that
a "Hidden" process status exists. With the right elevation,
you should see it. If it's malformed, well, it's Windows.

Paul

On 2023-02-08 21:52, Paul wrote:
> On 2/8/2023 12:20 PM, mike wrote:
>> On 08-02-2023 05:51 Paul <nospam@needed.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> If you run Process Explorer as Administrator, you can
>>> sometimes get a little more info.
>>
>> Thanks for that advice. I'll try that because what I want to do is
>> find out
>> WHY Thunderbird is hanging now that I know it's Thunderbird that's
>> hanging.
>> https://i.postimg.cc/Vsg7ShQL/tbhung.jpg
>>
>> One question I have is what is a "hidden process", which is a switch I
>> had
>> to manually turn on in the suggested Memory Hogs program.
>>
>> Memory Hogs Show Hidden Processes = off by default (I turned it on)
>
> There is a "Suspended" process. The image remains in memory,
> but the thing does not receive time slices. The inventor of this
> idea, thinks that the process can "start faster" this way. But
> we don't know, during the current session, whether it will ever
> start again or not.

The process can be swapped out to disk, too.

....

--
Cheers, Carlos.

"Carlos E.R." <robin_listas@es.invalid> wrote:

> VanguardLH wrote:
>
>> mike <this@address.is.invalid> wrote:
>>
>>> VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Disable anti-virus scanning of both incoming and outgoing e-mail
>>>> traffic. It is superfluous, anyway.
>>>
>>> I have the Windows Defender anti virus.
>>> Is it scanning my incoming/outgoing email?
>>
>> No. E-mail scanning is superfluous. There no more pest detection with
>> or without e-mail traffic scanning. Whenever a file is created, like
>> saving an e-mail, or detaching an attached file (which is a MIME part
>> inside the body of the e-mail), the on-demand (real-time) AV scanner
>> gets used, the same one used to interrogate the e-mail traffic. E-mail
>> scanning will sooner detect malware, but not afford more detection than
>> the on-access scanner. All e-mail AV scanning does is delay delivery of
>> the e-mail traffic to the client or to the server possibly causing
>> timeouts.
>
> Email scanning is better done at the mail server, and works very well.

Yep, if your e-mail provider's AV scanning is effective. I prefer it up
on the server, too. I use Hotmail and Gmail, and both are very
effective at inbound scanning. I'm not sure either scans outbound
e-mails (those you send through your accounts).

I have seen users, and tried it myself for a short time, that chain
e-mail providers to compound their AV scans. For example, they would
receive e-mail at Gmail (not forward it since that doesn't AV scan), and
then poll their Gmail account with a Hotmail/Outlook.com e-mail account.
Gmail scanned the inbound e-mail, and Hotmail/Outlook.com also scanned
the inbound e-mail, so 2 AVs were employed in getting the e-mail. In a
year, there was about 1 spam per 2 months found using the 2-layer
approach than just using 1-layer AV server-side scanning. AV scanning
has improved. 2-layer scanning was more popular back with AV scanner
were less effective, and there was a lot more spam.

I know users of other e-mail providers who server-side AV scanning is
poor, and they must employ a client-side AV solution. Hell, at one
point, a long time ago, I disabled Hotmail's AV scanning and employed my
client-side far superior setup. Alas, there is no off-switch for
Gmail's AV scanning to eliminate false positives. AVs can have false
positives, and there is no way to undo them. Reporting them to the
e-mail provider will be a slow process, or never works. They continue
to mark good messages as spam. The only way to solve the problem is to
disable the server-side AV scanning, and rely on your own client-side
solution. AV scanning is not perfect. Plus some folks are far more
sensitive to spam than I. If I get 2 spam a month, I'm happy with the
server-side solution. Some go irate getting 1 a month. However, if I
wanted critical e-mails that I must receive, false positives cannot be
tolerated. Most times, those go into the Junk folder; however, for
those still using POP, their local client does not see any false
postives that got dumped into the server-side Junk folder. They have to
occasionally use the webmail client to check the Junk folder, and only
by using the webmail client does moving false positives from Junk to
Inbox possibly (not every where) flag the spam as ham.

In fact, there are server-side rules where I try to ensure that some
e-mails are always received. Alas, the AV scanning is performed before
my server-side rules are applied. The AV overrides my server-side
rules, so false positives still go into the Junk folder, and rules don't
get applied to the Junk folder on new messages dumped into it. Rules
only exercise on new messages received into the Inbox folder. To ensure
my rules are exercised first means having to disable the server-side AV
scanning, and not all e-mail providers let you do that.

Server-side AV scanning is preferable, until it gets in your way.

On Wed, 8 Feb 2023 11:35:30 +0000, mechanic <mechanic@example.net>
wrote:

>On Wed, 8 Feb 2023 10:53:52 +0530, mike wrote:
>
>> Lately my machine has been crunching away for reasons previously unknown.
>>
>> I asked on the Windows newsgroup and they suggested running Memory Hogs.
>> https://www.ghacks.net/2017/01/23/memory-hogs/
>> http://michaels-tech-notes.info/software-database/
>> https://www.michaels-tech-notes.info/app/download/3888974/MemoryHogs.exe
>>
>> It turns out, at least so far, that Thunderbird is likely what's hanging.
>> https://i.postimg.cc/sg6DpCc9/hung.jpg
>>
>> The problem now is I don't know how to debug WHY Thunderbird is hanging.
>> What would you do next if you found out it was Thunderbird hanging the CPU?
>
>For email there are alternatives - use the web interface on your
>browser.

Each to his own of course, but as far as I'm concerned, that's far and
away the worst possible way to do e-mail. There are many e-mail
clients available, and to me even the worst of them is better than
doing it in a browser.

> If you really want to download email and save locally -
>rather than use IMAP - try using Alpine as an alternative to
>Thunderbird. You want to read the mail rather than debug the heap of
>junk that Thunderbird turned into some time ago. There are better
>things to do with your life!

On 08-02-2023 15:12 VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:

> Chinese spy balloon? - Mozilla Thunderbird
> Inbox - Mozilla Thunderbird

You sure jump to conclusions without any reason to be so suspicious.
It's easy to tell you're a highly intuitive myersbriggs personality. :)

You're in the realm of a spy novel so my advice is don't read too much
conspiracy into a thread I started myself to discuss the spy balloon in
real time with my friends.

As a sidenote, we were discussing the U2S dragon lady jamming that was done
above the balloon (in between the balloon & its communication satellites).

We discussed why the self-destruct mechanism never fired (did we jam it?).
And that it was about two thousand pounds and two hundred feet tall.

We discussed why NORAD in Canada didn't even see it because it was in the
layer between where we look for things to invade our air space. We covered
how the jet stream went west and east depending on altitude.

And we covered the three other incursions that we only found out from
humint, years after the fact, and we discussed the Columbian balloon too.

We covered the Frank01 & Frank02 callsign of the F22 Raptors (he's known as
the balloon buster) and we discussed the radio traffic of the RC135s (oops.
KC... that's the "official" designation) that dogged the balloon the whole
way.

We looked at all the high res photos of the payloads (those balls at the
ends) and how the helium filled the middle from a long tank. We even joked
at the "not made in china" remarks in the memes, and the balloon kill mark
as the very first F22 kill.

We even covered what happened to the cross beam, which seems to have b een
ejected seemingly if you look at some of the photos in this article.
https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2023-02-06/chinese-spy-balloon-pentagon-debris-9059103.html

We covered the sidewinder, and why Canada fired 1000 bullets into a balloon
into Newfoundland and it still didn't pop, which is why they used the 9X.

We weren't sure if the missile was armed but it had to be trained to know
the signature, which isn't one of their normal signatures, so that took
time which is another component of our domain awareness gap.

Likewise with the height as fighters don't generally fly at those
altitudes.

Oh yeah, we also discussed how it couldn't possibly be a mistake. They were
taking advantage of our lack of domain awareness for years on end.

All that is what you can read Thunderbird conspiracies into, but I wouldn't
as I'm sure you had the same conversations with your buddies using TB too.

mike <this@address.is.invalid> wrote:

> VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:
>
>> Chinese spy balloon? - Mozilla Thunderbird
>> Inbox - Mozilla Thunderbird
>
> You sure jump to conclusions without any reason to be so suspicious.

The title falls into the realm of spam and phish e-mails. Obviously I
could not see the content of the e-mail assuming you weren't viewing a
web page inside of Thunderbird. My telescope still cannot bend around
the curvature of the Earth.

> ...
> All that is what you can read Thunderbird conspiracies into, but I wouldn't
> as I'm sure you had the same conversations with your buddies using TB too.

And none of that used HTML, and you didn't open any web pages inside of
Tbird from links in the e-mail? None of the messages were huge in size,
or had lots of large attachments?

Someone here claimed Javascript is never allowed to execute from
messages (but is necessary for some functions within Tbird, and
Javascript is needed by add-ons yet you've kept the one you have without
testing by disabling it temporarily). Javascript is allowed to run when
you choose to render HTML-formatted e-mails in a web tab; i.e., you're
allowing Tbird to render the HTML e-mail as a web page. Add-ons (that
use Javascript), any userchrome.css customizations use Javascript, and
any web rendering uses Javascript, and Javascript can get stuck in
loops, especially if some resources are blocked that the script within
the page expects to be, by default, to be available, like with ad
blockers whose purpose is to break web pages.

Which e-mail protocols are you using in Tbird? POP only see the Inbox
folder in your account while IMAP can see (and syncs on) all the
subscribed folders. Did you yet try using the webmail client to your
account to check sizes of messages sitting in your account? What is
your refresh rate for mail polls?

Ken Blake <Ken@invalid.news.com> wrote:

> mechanic <mechanic@example.net> wrote:
>
>> For email there are alternatives - use the web interface on your
>> browser.
>
> Each to his own of course, but as far as I'm concerned, that's far and
> away the worst possible way to do e-mail. There are many e-mail
> clients available, and to me even the worst of them is better than
> doing it in a browser.
>
>> If you really want to download email and save locally - rather than
>> use IMAP - try using Alpine as an alternative to Thunderbird. You
>> want to read the mail rather than debug the heap of junk that
>> Thunderbird turned into some time ago. There are better things to do
>> with your life!

A web browser cannot notify you of a newly arrived e-mail, but a local
e-mail client can. Not everyone lives inside a web browser leaving it
running 24x7.

I remember hearing that Google came out with an add-on that has Chrome
monitor for new e-mails, like a local e-mail client. However, just like
a local e-mail client that must be running all the time to notify you
when new e-mails arrive, you had to leave the Chrome web browser running
24x7, too.

I use client-side e-mail clients to notify me of new e-mails, and to
manage my e-mail accounts. Because it monitors all my accounts, the
local client is also an aggregator. With web browsers, I'd have to
leave them loaded all the time (bitcoin miners love you), and with a tab
open to each e-mail provider, to get notified of new messages. However,
I do know of several folks that use just the webmail clients. They
can't figure out how to configure, use, and manage a client-side e-mail
program, and they refuse to learn. They know how to use their web
browser (although they may not know how to configure it), and don't want
to use any other method of accessing their e-mail. Alas, many of them
also use the Inbox as their archive and keep every scrap of garbage, so
when they want to show me an e-mail, they take forever scrolling around
or trying to use a search function but that doesn't work if they can't
remember what was in the e-mail.

However, I do use the webmail client when troubleshooting my account,
and maybe that's to what mechanic meant.

mike wrote:

> My more important question is to find a Windows debugging tool that will
> tell me what is it in Thunderbird that is causing it to hang.

Debugging software you haven't built yourself isn't easy, the TB you
have is presumably stripped of all symbols which would tell you what
each section of code was called.

You might get somwhere using ProcessMonitor, rather than
ProcessExplorer, which can tell you what files/pipes/registry entries a
program is using (not that TB will use many of the latter).

If you start with a blank profile, with no enail accounts, does that run
without hanging? If not, is your PC itself un-well, dying memory, dying
disk, poor PSU?

If it runs with an empty profile, does it hang after you enter an email
account, if it does you might be able to sync across your mail archives
using IMAP, with POP you'd have to do some manual copying, you can
export and re-import other stuff from your original profile (addr books,
message filters, calendar etc)

But first see if it can run without hanging, you can move on from there
if it does ...

VanguardLH wrote:

> Javascript is allowed to run when
> you choose to render HTML-formatted e-mails

You keep saying that without any evidence, send yourself an html email
containing

<script>alert("BOO!");</script>

do you get a javascript popup message when reading it?

On 09-02-2023 01:05 VanguardLH <V@nguard.LH> wrote:

>> You sure jump to conclusions without any reason to be so suspicious.
>
> The title falls into the realm of spam and phish e-mails. Obviously I
> could not see the content of the e-mail assuming you weren't viewing a
> web page inside of Thunderbird. My telescope still cannot bend around
> the curvature of the Earth.

Which is exactly _why_ you shouldn't jump to wild conclusions.
It's what racists do.

It's also how marketing works.
They hint at something and then let you built your own spurious story.

When solving technical problems, it doesn't help to jump to wild
conclusions but you're certainly welcome to ask if it was a nefarious
email.

It wasn't.

>> All that is what you can read Thunderbird conspiracies into, but I wouldn't
>> as I'm sure you had the same conversations with your buddies using TB too.
>
> And none of that used HTML, and you didn't open any web pages inside of
> Tbird from links in the e-mail? None of the messages were huge in size,
> or had lots of large attachments?

Just as I never use plugins or extensions in TB, I never open anything
inside of TB other than text messages. If it's a URL I let my default
(secure) web browser handle that - which gives me time to react to it.

My MIME-Types are usually set for all browsers and for TB to save almost
all file types, especially PDF files, although images are an issue.

If you save all images instead of rendering them, it's a bit harder,
so I generally only have the videos saved but I allow images to display.

> Someone here claimed Javascript is never allowed to execute from
> messages (but is necessary for some functions within Tbird, and
> Javascript is needed by add-ons yet you've kept the one you have without
> testing by disabling it temporarily). Javascript is allowed to run when
> you choose to render HTML-formatted e-mails in a web tab; i.e., you're
> allowing Tbird to render the HTML e-mail as a web page. Add-ons (that
> use Javascript), any userchrome.css customizations use Javascript, and
> any web rendering uses Javascript, and Javascript can get stuck in
> loops, especially if some resources are blocked that the script within
> the page expects to be, by default, to be available, like with ad
> blockers whose purpose is to break web pages.

I don't know what my Javascript settings are in TB but I never see "pretty"
email. Often when I get commercial email, all the images and fancy stuff
doesn't show. When I forward it to others, even more underlying formatting
commands show up. I guess that means that Javascript isn't working.

But I'm not really sure.

> Which e-mail protocols are you using in Tbird? POP only see the Inbox
> folder in your account while IMAP can see (and syncs on) all the
> subscribed folders. Did you yet try using the webmail client to your
> account to check sizes of messages sitting in your account? What is
> your refresh rate for mail polls?

I'm only using TB for email on Windows, using IMAP only.
On Android I use the TB K9 mail user agent.
I never use a web browser to get email on any platform.

I think what I'm going to do is delete TB and reinstall it.
What's holding me up is I don't want to lose the email.

I think I'll follow the advice to install the portable TB instead.
That advice said the mail folders would be saved in that portable folder.

My biggest worry about uninstalling & re-installing TB is losing my mail.
But since it's all on IMAP, I probably won't lose a thing.

Still. I worry.