Trying to recover a saved profile; copied it into "Profiles" and created new profile; Tbird starts with no account, all blank.
I saved a Tbird profile from my PC before reloading the OS after a nasty virus attack. I copied the profile files into the "profile" account where my current (new) profile is stored. Following instructions from this forum, I created a new profile and pointed it to the old saved profile. When I start up Tbird with this profile, it comes up like it had never been run, asking to create a new email account. Is there a way to get this profile to work?
All Replies (3)
Did you edit profiles.ini by hand?
I think you should start Thunderbird with the profile manager and from there select your copied profile. I'm pretty sure it's just not quite where Thunderbird expects to find it.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_Manager
Take note of the quotation marks and copy them as given; some users assume they are a typographical nicety but in fact they are are essential part of a long file name or path name that incorporates spaces.
Zenos, Thanks for your reply. I followed the instructions: I ran Tbird profile manager, created a new profile and browsed to the path for the saved profile.
Tbird is still running in profile manager mode. When I start it, I can select my current profile and it works fine. If I select the other profile, it starts up after a delay and puts up the Welcome to Thunderbird screen.
Update: I solved this problem. It turns out that the prefs.js file in my backed up profile folder was encrypted by the virus that destroyed my system, and I hadn't noticed this when I reviewed the backup files. When I started Tbird with the new profile I had created, I suppose it couldn't access the prefs file so it created a new (blank) one. So it started up with no info. I replaced the prefs.js file with the prefs file from my current, working profile, and PRESTO I now have a separate profile with access to all of my old email messages and address book. Just FYI.