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TB finds my profile but behaves like a new installation

  • 2 replies
  • 0 have this problem
  • Last reply by sfhowes

tiresias
tiresias
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My Windows laptop crashed today. When I restarted and opened Thunderbird all of my emails were not listed and it prompted me to create an email account - it is behaving like a new install with no profile.

I checked "about:profiles"and it lists the correct existing profile folder as "This is the profile in use".

Clicking "Open Folder" displays the files in my existing profile and their "date modified" property updates whenever I restart Thunderbird, so it must be accessing the correct profile folder. Yet it is behaving as if there is no profile.

Perhaps a file in the profile folder is corrupt?

It has been a week or so since I backed up the folder and I don't want to lose all of the recent email messages.

Is there something I can do to that will make Thunderbird recognise my profile properly (and retain the recent emails) ?

My Windows laptop crashed today. When I restarted and opened Thunderbird all of my emails were not listed and it prompted me to create an email account - it is behaving like a new install with no profile. I checked "about:profiles"and it lists the correct existing profile folder as "This is the profile in use". Clicking "Open Folder" displays the files in my existing profile and their "date modified" property updates whenever I restart Thunderbird, so it must be accessing the correct profile folder. Yet it is behaving as if there is no profile. Perhaps a file in the profile folder is corrupt? It has been a week or so since I backed up the folder and I don't want to lose all of the recent email messages. Is there something I can do to that will make Thunderbird recognise my profile properly (and retain the recent emails) ?

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tiresias
tiresias Question owner
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OK. I think I managed to fix it.

I made a guess that the actual email message files were probably OK, and it was just the config files that held info about the email accounts that was messed up. So if I could restore a backup of the profile, then replace just the email messages from the bad profile, I should end up with a fix and all of the emails up to date.

So....

I renamed the profile folder by appending ".BROKEN" to its file name.

Then I copied/restored the backup of the profile folder to my PC.

In the restored profile folder, I then renamed the "global-messages-db.sqlite" file by appending ".OLD" to its file name.

I then renamed the "Mail" folder by appending ".OLD"

I then copied the Mail folder tree from the BROKEN folder to the restored folder.

Then I started up Thunderbird, and it all looked OK.

It is still building a new "global-messages-db.sqlite" file which seems to take AGES, so when that is finished I should hopefully have all the conversation threads rebuilt.

If everything still seems OK in a few days, I will delete the .OLD and .BROKEN folders

Modified by tiresias

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sfhowes
sfhowes
  • Top 10 Contributor
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There was probably only a single corrupted file, prefs.js, which can usually be replaced by a prefs-1.js or prefs-2.js or... already in the profile, or prefs.js from a recent backup.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1360261

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