I was forced to move away from TB portable months ago because it kept crashing my system (Win7 64) every time I received mail (sometimes if there were only a couple of emails retrieved it would crash to blue screen when I tried to view the retrieved emails). Seems to have been a common problem as there was a lot about this happening on the net. Couldn't find any solution to stop it crashing. Moved to DreamMail which worked well. Now the European support site for DreamMail is closing up. They haven't been able to contact the Chinese author for a year and a security vulnerability has been found. So they are recommending changing software. Having just got a new laptop (Win8 64) I decided to test Thunderbird again. Completely fresh install. Set up an account. Retrieve mail. Immediately crashes to blue screen. Tried SeaMonkey as well. Same thing. No solution found via Google search.
As most new systems are shipping with 64-bit OS is anybody using TB Portable successully on a 64 bit OS? If so, have you had crashes? And how did you get it to stop crashing?
Nearly 100% of the time, this is due to a malfunctioning video driver on the system or a specific hardware issue. It is impossible for an app to crash a properly configured copy of Windows (unless the app is purposely exploiting a Windows bug). Did you check your event logs to see what crashed?
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Thanks for responding John.
I just tried something slightly different and downloaded the 24.0 version from SourceForge (into the portable apps directory and installed from within portable apps) rather than the portable apps optimised version (though I notice that today the link in Get Apps now points to that version also, but I don't think it did a couple of days ago). On my PC I got the same crash as ever, but not to a blue screen. Instead I wound up with Windows trying to restart itself but finding no boot manager. I had to go into the bios and reset the boot disk to c (SSD drive) as it had changed to d (which is a sata drive with no operating system on it). This is what I can find in event logs:
Log Name: System
Source: Microsoft-Windows-Kernel-Power
Date: 22/09/2013 16:04:58
Event ID: 41
Task Category: (63)
Level: Critical
Keywords: (2)
User: SYSTEM
Computer: siak
Description:
The system has rebooted without cleanly shutting down first. This error could be caused if the system stopped responding, crashed, or lost power unexpectedly.
Event Xml:
41216300x8000000000000002114481Systemsiak00x00x00x00x0false0
A few seconds later this appears in the applications event log (no idea if its related):
Log Name: Application
Source: Microsoft-Windows-WMI
Date: 22/09/2013 16:05:09
Event ID: 10
Task Category: None
Level: Error
Keywords: Classic
User: N/A
Computer: siak
Description:
Event filter with query "SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 99" could not be reactivated in namespace "//./root/CIMV2" because of error 0x80041003. Events cannot be delivered through this filter until the problem is corrected.
Event Xml:
1002000x8000000000000010513Applicationsiak//./root/CIMV2SELECT * FROM __InstanceModificationEvent WITHIN 60 WHERE TargetInstance ISA "Win32_Processor" AND TargetInstance.LoadPercentage > 990x80041003
English is my native language but none of it says anything meaningful to me. I've tried translating it into Serbo-Croat where it does make fractionally more sense, and Exacerbated-Geek (Bill Gates' native language) which I find equally meaningless.
I originally ran into problems with TB portable under 64 bit OS quite a while ago, which prompted the move to DreamMail after searching for a solution on the net, finding quite a lot of people with the same problem, but no solutions. I've since tried on 3 different 64 bit systems (2 PC, 1 laptop) with identical results. I'm no expert but that doesn't sound to me like a malfunctioning video driver or specific hardware issue as its 3 completely different systems.
I believe at that time the version was 17.something and that with my attempts over the past few days Portable Apps Platform was still downloading that version.
I've also downloaded the 24.0 version onto my laptop and installed it without using the Portable Apps Platform. For the first time I've managed to set up an email address without it crashing to a blue screen. And I've also successfully received email. Will keep an eye on it as the next time I went back to the laptop it wouldn't come out of sleep mode (the login screen appeared in flickers but immediately went black again). Have reset to sleep after 2 minutes and have yet to have a problem bringing it out of sleep. Will see what happens with a longer period.
Will now see what happens if I uninstall TB from the portable apps platform, copy the laptop install into the portable apps directory on my portable drive, and then try launching it from my PC. Will report later.
FredFrogley