Resolved Thunderbird will not print; everything else prints normally.

This problem is not related to the printing problem I first reported a few days ago, different computer, different network, different location miles apart. AND, not an HP computer.

Windows 10 Home 64-bit on MSI Z97 Gaming 3 Main Board with Intel i7-4790K 4GHz. I built this system, myself, about 6 years ago and this is the first time since 2017 I have had this problem.

Thunderbird will not print to paper printer or to any PDF program (Acrobat 9 Pro or Bullzip). The last time this happened was a couple of years ago. At that time, it was "a known problem" and Mozilla was "working on a fix"; but, this time I see no reports on the 'net of a "known" Thunderbird problem. Thunderbird nor Windows reports errors -- no pop-up, no error message, nothing.

The only way I can print an e-mail is to save the e-mail as HTML, then print the HTML from Firefox or another a browser.

To be clear, all other programs print normally.

I uninstalled Thunderbird 60.5 rebooted and installed Thunderbird 60, no change.

I uninstalled Thunderbird 60 rebooted and installed Thunderbird 52, no change, so I went back to the latest Thunderbird installed directly from the Mozilla site, still no change.

There are no jobs stuck in the print queue.

I have opened the "See what's printing" window and watched as the print command is given. The job appears for a split second and disappears just as all jobs do when they do actually print.

Paper printer is silent, doesn't even spit out a blank page.

When I attempt to print to Acrobat 9 Pro or Bullzip, everything seems to work normally until the end but the file it puts out is blank.

When I attempt to print to the paper printer, the printer remains totally silent as though nothing was sent at all.

I've been building computers, troubleshooting applications and small networks and removing viruses for over twenty years but I've made no progress with this one. I have a monthly image of the drive from the first of every month and I'm sure that would fix this problem; but, I would rather learn from this and be able to fix it.

 

Hi Alex, My printer has not experienced this problem with W10 Pro 64bit Version 1809 Build 17763.379 and TB 60.5.3
Have you tried TB in SAFE Mode?
It may be an App which is not compatible with the newer version.
Mozilla Help seem to show this has happened frequently after new version updates are installed.

 

Thanks but Safe Mode produces no change in behavior.

 

Major clue: The problem seems to reside in Thunderbird's Profile folder (as opposed to anything concerning Windows per se or the Windows Registry).

I make daily backups of files changed or added to in the last two days of Thunderbird's profile folder and monthly full backups. I pulled the full backup of Thunderbird's January 1st Profile folder and put it in place of the current Thunderbird Profile folder.

Thunderbird now prints.

Now I need to figure out what files to delete/replace from the current profile folder and still be able to retain all sent and received messages.

I hope all of that makes sense.

 

Solved: First, I put the current Profile folder back to the condition where it did not print and confirmed it would not print. Then, I replaced the addons.json file in the current Profile folder with addons.json from a backup made on February 28th and it now prints.

My guess is I could have accomplished the same fix by deleting addons.json.