The last few times Mozilla Thunderbird tried to install an automatic update on my computer, things got stuck and it was unable to finish. When I open Thunderbird an error message kept  popping up saying something like this:

    “One or more files could not be updated. Please make sure all other applications are closed and that you have permission to modify files, and the restart Thunderbird to try again”

When I clicked on OK it tried to update again and failed with the same error message. This kept happening in an endless loop.

The problem appeared to be something to do with another program running. Not knowing where to start, I brought up windows Task Manager and went about shutting down one process at a time and restarting  Thunderbird. After several attempts, where TB popped up the same error message, I clicked on OK and the upgrade install completed correctly. In my case it was quickcam.exe, used by my logitech webcam.

If you are having this problem, try this fix:

Press ctrl-alt-delete to start Task Manager. Next click on the processes tab and look down the list for quickcam.exe .
(Hint.. click in the title - Image Name - to have the file names listed in alphabetical order.)

Click on quickcam.exe to highlight it and then click the stop process button below. You will get a Task Manager warning box... click OK to shut down the process.

Now start Thunderbird again. (if TB is still running shut it down or kill the process in Task Manager) You may still get the Thunderbird error message again... just click OK and the update should work...

You can now restart quickcam.exe if necessary, it will not cause further problems, at least not until the next update when you may have to do this again.

Casey . .

Last changed: Feb 10 2011 at 12:27 AM