SOLVED - Thunderbird won't restart - thinks it is already running

[William_in_Kanata]

When I try to start Thunderbird, I am getting the following error message:

Thunderbird is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Thunderbird process, or restart your system.

The system has been restarted, (even fully shutdown, powered off), but Thunderbird still refuses to start. I am assuming that there is some sort of lock file somewhere that was not deleted, but so far I haven't been able to find it. Anyone have an idea of what to look for, or even where?

Thanks for your time.

[Snowhog]

Re: Thunderbird won't restart - thinks it is already running

A very old post, however...

Thunderbird has a stale Lock file, How to delete ?

[William_in_Kanata]

Solved - Re: Thunderbird won't restart - thinks it is already running

The machine where this problem occured was being rebuilt, and the user wanted to restore his old profile, mailboxes, etc, etc. after re-installing Thunderbird and renamed the default account folder. However there was a problem with the back up, and he tried to restart Thunderbird without restoring the folder to its proper name.

Sorry to have troubled you.

[Snowhog]

Re: SOLVED - Thunderbird won't restart - thinks it is already running

No problem at all.

[uv_goth]

Re: SOLVED - Thunderbird won't restart - thinks it is already running

I've been getting this with Firefox.

I just open up System Monitor and Kill firefox-bin