I’m sorry that I didn’t take more time to investigate it, because it would certainly be a neat discovery, but it was annoying me and I couldn’t take it any more.
Every time I would open my email, I would get the BSoD. It turns out that there was some message in my work email account that was triggering a GPF (that IRQL_* error that appears all too often any more with XP SP2). The most interestng part is that it wasn’t happening only in Thunderbird.
I got tired of not being able to read email without crashing, so I downloaded Pegasus Mail to clear out the mailbox and potentially view the problem message. Well, Pegasus Mail got so far through my 227 messages, and then wham!, another blue screen of death. So the problem wasn’t a glitch in the client, but in the transmission of the email itself.
I admit that potentially the problem might have existed in my pop3 antivirus filter. This is probably more likely. I don’t know what an email could contain that would be so deadly.
I dowloaded a utility that does nothing but delete everything in a specified POP3 box, and pointed it at my work mail account. Who needs it anyway?
