Thunderbird loses key strokes

[Dan in Saint Louis]

Thunderbird appears to not accept key strokes if it happens to check mail while I am composing a message. It also does not seem to store the key strokes in a buffer, to be entered into the message after the mail downloading is done.

Might there be a multi-tasking problem here? Could there be a prefs.js setting to allow more processing threads at once?

Thunderbird 1.5.0.8, WinXPPro/SP2, Athlon XP3200+, 1 GB RAM.

Thank you!