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Following a thunderbird crash, my profile is not being read

  • 23 iimpendulo
  • 1 inayo le ngxaki
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  • Impendulo yokugqibela ngu Wayne Mery

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Yesterday a network drive that contained my profile went offline (no drive issues, a network one.) Thunderbird crashed. Upon restarting thunderbird, I got a new email session dialogue, and none of my old info was present.

I checked the server, the files are all still there, along with a 15+ GB mail folder.

I've tried the various approaches that people have posted involving creating a new profile, and migrating my imap and mail folders, etc. I've tried the profileswitcher add on, etc. None of those have seemed to work. No matter what I try, I keep getting that request to start at 0.

I've copied all the mail and profile and such to my desktop machine to avoid this particular problem in future, but pointing the profile at either directory (network drive or desktop copy) is not seeming to work.

Seems likely that one or more of the files was mucked up when the drive went offline. Ultimately, though, I just want to get in and get access to all my old emails (and use thunderbird to access the incoming ones.) I'm open as to what to try next? Thanks in advance for any helpful advice!

Yesterday a network drive that contained my profile went offline (no drive issues, a network one.) Thunderbird crashed. Upon restarting thunderbird, I got a new email session dialogue, and none of my old info was present. I checked the server, the files are all still there, along with a 15+ GB mail folder. I've tried the various approaches that people have posted involving creating a new profile, and migrating my imap and mail folders, etc. I've tried the profileswitcher add on, etc. None of those have seemed to work. No matter what I try, I keep getting that request to start at 0. I've copied all the mail and profile and such to my desktop machine to avoid this particular problem in future, but pointing the profile at either directory (network drive or desktop copy) is not seeming to work. Seems likely that one or more of the files was mucked up when the drive went offline. Ultimately, though, I just want to get in and get access to all my old emails (and use thunderbird to access the incoming ones.) I'm open as to what to try next? Thanks in advance for any helpful advice!

Ilungisiwe ngu Matt

All Replies (3)

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the profile has a prefs.js, but it had next to nothing in it, and was last modified in 2007.

That doesn't make sense. You had working accounts before the incident, so there must have been a valid prefs.js file before. Where, I don't know.

Since you already created a new profile you can import your existing mail into the new profile using this add-on. https://addons.mozilla.org/thunderbird/addon/importexporttools/

Also see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_data_to_a_new_profile_-_Thunderbird#Mail

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If it was on the network, perhaps you might be so lucky as to have a "good" version of the prefs.js file laying around in shadow copy space. (depends if your administrator enabled it)

Ilungisiwe ngu Wayne Mery

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your shutdown crashes might also be related.

shutdownhang | kernelbase.dll@0xcacb8  per bp-6be7305f-c1c4-4b24-a051-4e8e92161103 from 2016-11-03 03:50:46
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