alf  on August 16, 2007

Thank you very much for helpful information!

My Firefox was stuck in the same kind of upgrade problem, though it would start after OK-ing the error message a couple o’ times. Deleting everything inside the equivalent Mozilla Firefox folder did the trick.

That is, C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Firefox\Mozilla Firefox

Miki  on September 19, 2007

I have the same problem, but in WIN XP, I do not have those files at all. I can not delete 2 sys32 files from Thunderbird folder, until I deinstall Firefox first. The stupid thing is that I have TB 2.0.0.6, and the update is also 2.0.0.6. It happens automatically every week and I have no way to stop it. How the hell do I stop automatic update to the same release?

jess  on September 19, 2007

Miki – my problem was Thunderbird in WinXP as well. You checked under Documents and Settings for your logged in user account and didn’t see that structure or files?

Isaac Rabinovitch  on November 15, 2007

I just got bit by the same bug. Thanks much for posting the workaround.

Hard to believe that nobody has done anything about such a long-standing bug. And TB has many other issues. I’m really unhappy that Mozilla Foundation is doing so little to support ThunderBird. It’s not like they don’t have the resources.

If there were a good alternative, I’d switch to it. But there isn’t — all the more reason for me to be concerned.

John Feeney  on November 16, 2007

I just experienced the same bug. Very sloppy by the developers, this is the kind of thing that turns people off open-source solutions.

Kevin  on November 24, 2007

Thunderbird gave me this problem before too, however I can’t find the site I used previously to fix it. There’s one file in particular that causes this that you just delete/rename. But removing the files in the folder the original author specified does the trick and is easier to do Miki & anyone else having the same issue, make sure you have the folder option checked to view hidden files/folders to get the the ‘Local Settings’ and ‘Application Data’ folder.

Richard  on February 27, 2008

Thanks a heap, this error was driving me mad!

Harald  on February 28, 2008

Ok, what do I do again under Windows XP? I have switched on seeing hidden files, I still do not see the files mentioned here. I get to “Application Data\Thunderbird” and there I find to files and a directory called “Profiles”. Plus, a pointer to non-geeks: better always make a copy of anything that you erase but do not know what it is supposed to do. That way you can undo the erase, if need be (hopefully…).

Harald  on February 28, 2008

… sorry I overlooked the “Local Settings” bit…

Harald  on February 28, 2008

… and here is, what worked, finally. After erasing these files, right-click on mozMapi32.dll in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\ and rename it. Download a new, full version of Thunderbird from Mozilla, install and hope for the best. Worked for me.

Reto  on February 29, 2008

Had the same problem: Haralds trick worked fine.. Thanks!

Felix  on March 5, 2008

In fact, you don’t need to delete profile data. Just close Thunderbird, delete mozMapi32.dll (as Harald suggested), start Thunderbird, and it gets updated successfully. Unfortunately, I’ve been doing it for a year now.

norman  on March 8, 2008

So this stops the loop but doesn’t fix the problem. Every time you try to update it will get caught in the loop again.

norman  on March 14, 2008

In fact this is not a fix to the problem. Still can’t update whats a drag is that this is the first result in google

jess  on March 14, 2008

Thanks for visiting again norman. This is what fixed the issue for me at the time, and apparently has helped some others in the past.

I can’t speak to if this fixes the loop now, as I no longer use Thunderbird. Have you tried searching Bugzilla or opening a new bug report there?

ianm  on March 19, 2008

There are a number or programs that for no fault of mozilla lock the file mozmapi32.dll

In my case it was quickcam.exe which is used by a logitech webcam. ctrl-alt-delete click on the processes tab, click on ‘quickcam.exe’ then click the stop process button, then try opening thunderbird again. You may have to stop ‘updater.exe’ or something. Best close firefox and of course thunderbird.

jonmansey  on May 2, 2008

quitting Quickcam.exe in the task manager fixed it for me too, seems like the mozilla folks should have a word with the logitech folks.

Mozilla Thunderbird stuck in upgrade | purple orange  on May 2, 2008

[...] Thunderbird Stuck in Endless Upgrade [...]

acrobaleno  on May 3, 2008

Many thanks ianm. Quickcam.exe was the causing the problem in my case as well. Very helpful site. It took me 5 min to fix my problem after googling it.

marcelotroubledwiththunderbird  on May 4, 2008

Hi,
I found a different solution (or that it seems to be)

I also had this problem of the endless loop of error and re-update trial and the only solution was normally to kill the process from the task manager (winXP)

Before starting Thunderbird, I installed UNLOCKER, which detects the bottlenecks apparently. The thing is this time I had no problem at all and the upgrading went smoothly.

hope it helps

M.

marcelotroubledwiththunderbird  on May 4, 2008

I forgot to mention

I have none of the conflicting programs mentioned above (quickCam, spybot, etc), so there must be some other programs making troubles

Tracey  on May 7, 2008

Thank you – all of your comments were really helpful.

Israel  on May 8, 2008

all i did was quit logitech quick cam and it worked.

stevenstark  on May 11, 2008

confirmed that closing the quickcam.exe process and re-trying the thunderbird setup worked for me, windows vista x64

Tracey  on May 21, 2008

any suggestions how to stop Thunderbird from automatically getting the update again?

ditfos  on May 31, 2008

I had been dutifully deleting those files, but quitting Quickcam worked for me as well – the update immediately worked! Thanks everybody.

Tracey – you can stop Thunderbird from automatically updating by (when you get it to start again using one of the ways detailed above)
Tools -> Options -> Advanced tab -> uncheck automatic check for updates [alternately, leave that checked, but select 'Ask me what to do' below - this will be more annoying, however]

caffeinelover  on June 2, 2008

XP Pro, Thunderbird upgrade to 2.0.0.14. Endless upgrade loop until I killed the quickcam.exe process. Then it ran smoothly. Thanks.

ModemMan  on June 16, 2008

I’m using an Acer laptop with inbuilt webcam (Logitec), as such doesn’t have quickcam.exe but OrbiCam.exe. Killed that process and thunderbird updated correctly.

proft  on July 24, 2008

In my case the Logitech QuickCam system tray icon was indeed the interfering factor. Closing out the tray icon immediately rectified the issue.

fletch  on July 25, 2008

Whats even more annoying is it keeps turning on automatic downloads and trys to install the update despite my settings. Shades of spyware, I hope this is just a bug and not intentional. I too have the logitech camera but I know it’s not at fault for the continued “sneaky” downloading.

tony  on July 26, 2008

Yay! This has been driving me nutz for weeks! Stopped the quickcam.exe process and voila! Thanks guyz!

Jaymoon  on August 14, 2008

Thank you for this post… I know it’s a year old, but you have no idea how much this has helped.

You’d think that a year later, this would be fixed by now…

Phil  on September 26, 2008

My thanks for this discussion as well. I was stuck in the updater loop for the first time today but going into the task manager and killing off quickcam.exe freed it up. So why the #%(& would THAT be locking DLLs that belong to Thunderbird? Interestingly, I didn’t even have my quick cam actually hooked up at the moment.

Mike  on September 27, 2008

Thanks for this information — I too had the Logitech quickcam service running, and following the steps here fixed everything

Tom Steenhuysen  on September 28, 2008

Amazing but true: DISABLE QUICKCAM.EXE and Thunderbird works fine.

Kövi Gergő  on September 29, 2008

Thanks for the useful information! You’ve saved a plenty of time for me!

Mr. X  on October 3, 2008

I just deleted mozMapi32.dll (as Harald suggested), and I also closed the Logitech webcam and both worked fine.

pscs  on October 6, 2008

mozmapi32.dll is the MAPI interface file for Thunderbird. This will probably be used by any third party program which wants to be able to send emails. So, here, the quickcam software, Snagit, and various others want to use it.

So, you can either close down everything (including tray programs) to try to stop things using it, or delete the mozmapi32.dll file manually.

Jes  on November 2, 2008

At last! Finally updated! Thanks!

Private  on November 19, 2008

One quick solution, is to boot up in safe mode with networking, do the update start thunderbird or mozilla (Because the both have the same problem) and quit and reboot back in “Normal Mode”

It fixes my problem every time.

Thanks

Thunderbird and it’s upgrade fail loop « Ninjawa  on November 25, 2008

[...] restarting the computer, uninstalling Thunderbird, etc. without much luck.  I seem to have found a solution (although perhaps only temporary) for this problem.  Now I can get back to checking my email.  [...]

Fern  on November 29, 2008

stopping the logitec quick cam in the task bar notification area allowed he update to complete successfully ..F:)

zoly  on December 31, 2008

I agree with the people who have Logitec Quick Cam installed, it causes somehow the problem. Shutting down the process with CTRL+ALT+DEL and finding logitec quick cam process will solve the update error…

Tyler Style  on December 31, 2008

I’m running tbird on XP SP3. As per a suggestion on another site, I was trying to delete C:\Documents and Settings\\Local Settings\Application Data\Thunderbird\mozMapi32.dll.

Windows popped up an alert telling me that I couldn’t delete the file, which was rather suspicious. I fired up ProcessExplorer and found that of all things Gadwin Printscreen had locked that dll! I shut down the program, killed thunderbird.exe to escape from the endless loop, and then fired up tbird again. Upgrade proceeded with NO problems whatsoever.

Perhaps the updater needs to check to make sure that mozMapi32.dll is not locked by other processes before trying to update?

Sardaukar86  on January 11, 2009

Logitech problem here too – I used ‘Unlocker’, a wee freeware util that shows the processes locking the selected file (mozMap32.dll).

Killing the Logitech process certainly sorts the problem out for that login session but to actually resolve the issue, open the Logitech software and hit the ‘Gears’ icon (settings).

From here select the last ‘tab’ and you’ll see a drop-down combobox that allows you to select your preferred e-mail client. Set this to anything other than Thunderbird and this problem should not re-occur.

Tepp  on January 12, 2009

Had the same problem but simply temporarily disabled my Antivirus program (Kaspersky) before starting Thunderbird…

patrick  on January 16, 2009

Thanks for your post. Had to quick quickcam.exe

Mr. Serge  on March 18, 2009

Works fine in my case when I disable anti-virus software (Kaspersky).

Yka  on March 20, 2009

Same as Tepp. That is the only thing that worked for me. Other solutions just would not do it.
So disable Kaspersky for a minute if you have this AV. It works.

Dave  on March 20, 2009

I was hoping Sardaukar86’s fix would work, but my Quickcam program already had Outlook as it’s preferred email client. Yet Thunderbird still gives me this loop every time I try to upgrade it.

So I guess I’ll have to continue killing Quickcam.exe every upgrade…

thanks  on March 21, 2009

Thanks for this… I had to kill quickcam as well. I guess this was the first update since I hooked the cam up…

simonwien  on April 30, 2009

Just to say thanks to all this has been getting on my nerves for weeks now but getting rid of the the Logitech in ctrl alt & Del worked for me.
Simon

ME  on June 6, 2009

Killing Quickcam totally worked. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

MeToo  on June 23, 2009

Quickcam.exe was the culprit in my case. Killed it, and the thunderbird update worked fine. Thanks!

Girith  on June 27, 2009

Thunderbird was stuck in the update process for me too, until I closed Kaspersky Antivirus.

Jirristols  on June 29, 2009

Thanx a lot, almost had the monday morning blues if it weren’t for this solution!

dust  on September 24, 2009

Yep, exited the Logitech QuickCam app tray program and update succeeded. Thanks!