Thunderbird won't open anymore
 

I'm in Slackware 9.1 running GNOME 2.4 and for some reason Thunderbird has ceased to load (after using it for about 2-3 months). When I click the icon to load the program it starts (I get a blank window titled Inbox for my@address - Mozilla Thunderbird), but then within about 2-3 seconds it just closes.

The only thing I can think of changing in the system was attempting to add several TrueType fonts I had in Windows to my Linux installation. Would that effect Thunderbird's loading??

I should note that this also happens with the newest version of Thunderbird as well...

It could be the font thing. Thunderbird has been crashy for me in the past when I screwed up installing fontconfig. Also, it can sometimes be crashy if you get an email with an attachment that has a mime type with no application to handle it in Gnome. I tried to give up Open Office so I didn't install it for a while, then I got some emails with powerpoint attachments which made Thunderbird crash. So I caved and installed Open Office.
It could be something else fubar in your profile. Try re-naming the hidden folder .thunderbird in your home folder (delete a letter, add a letter, whatever) then start Thunderbird and enter all you details again. Hopefully a clean profile will solve the problem. You'll still have your old mail in the renamed folder.

I just now tried the rename .thunderbird folder. It let me in to create a new profile, however once I'm done creating the profile Thunderbird crashes again without any sort of error message (just disappears).

I guess if anything I'd just like to recover the email and stick it in Opera or something. I really like Thunderbird...I'd LOVE to be able to get it back. What a pain...

If it won't work with a clean profile that tends to suggest it might be the font issue you talked about. Try moving them out of the way and see if you can narrow it down to which ones are causing the problem.

have you tried running thunderbird from a terminal to see if it gives you any error messages there?

Bingo! That was the issue! I simply moved the fonts to another folder and Thunderbird fires right up.

Could it be that the fonts need to be something other than READ-ONLY? That's what the permissions were set to.