Help, please. My Tbird profile disappeared.

[Mark246]

Using the Profile Manager to delete a one old profile, with all of its files, but somehow my Good profile (Mark184) was deleted.
Piriform Recuva found and recovered 9,377 items, 9.4GB, for that Mark184 profile.
I recovered them to the original folder names (but on a different drive), like ...
cache2, calendar-data, crashes, datareporting, extensions, Mail, and startupCache.
Those are the only folders that were recovered to the Mark184 root folder,
and there are several child folders in some of those seven folders.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/pr ... -user-data
told me to use Tbird Profile Manager to create a new profile (Mark185) then Exit.
I copied all of the Mark184 files to the Mark185 profile folder.
When I start Tbird, neither of the two email accounts are shown.
I do have a Cobian backup from two months ago. Can ya' tell me?...
Which specific files do I need to get from the Cobian backup, in order to get the email accounts up again?
Thanks, in advance, people.

[tanstaafl]

Thunderbird won't auto-discover accounts just because you copied their directories. Did you copy the prefs.js file from Mark184 to Mark185? That's the file that defines your accounts (among other settings).

Is the new account wizard being automatically run when you start Thunderbird, using the new profile?

[Mark246]

ThereAintNoSuchThingAsAFreeLunch, YOU are a blessing.
Yes, the "Would you like a new email address?" thing starts.
The new Mark185 profile has...
prefs.js, size 5,355, modified on 10/18/2018
prefs_1.js, size 17,600, modified on 1/31/2018
prefs_2.js, size 17,551, modified on 1/30/2018
A file copied from the old Mark184 profile is...
prefs.js, size 22,502, modified 10/16/2018
Regardless, I renamed (temporarily) the 3 prefs Mark185 files,
and again copied the 22,502 prefs.js file from Mark184 to Mark185.
Started Tbird... no change... no email accounts, and the "new account?" thing shows.
Exited Tbird... and the prefs.js file is now reduced to size 4,771.
Renamed things, using the size 17,600 prefs file...
Started Tbird... same results, & back to size 4,771.
Renamed things, using the size 17,551 prefs file...
Started Tbird... same results, & size 4,771.
A clue to the problem?...
the 22,502 & the 5,355 & the 4,771 files are all displayed by xplorer2 as ascii text.
the 17,600 & 17,551 files are displayed as Hex data (I'm sure that you understand that.)
?
Mark246

[tanstaafl]

The new account wizard runs if you are either using a profile with a prefs.js file where it can't find any existing accounts, or the profile didn't exist (the profiles.ini file doesn't know about it). In the latter case Thunderbird creates a stub of a profile.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Running_from_ ... hunderbird describes how to pass a command line argument specifying the profiles location, ignoring the contents of profiles.ini. You don't need a usb drive to do that. I suggest you try running your profile that way. If it doesn't launch the new account wizard then you had a problem with the profiles.ini file.

I suggest you also view the contents of your prefs.js file using Notepad, and see if it specifies any email addresses. It would normally only do that if it had account information.

However, if you only had 2 accounts it might be simplest just to use the new account wizard to add both of them again, and then (for each of them) change the local directory setting at the bottom of the server settings window (it has a Browse button next to it, which you might want to use) to use the directory that you copied the old accounts files to.

The main thing you have to be careful about is backing up your profile if the accounts information is stored outside of the profile directory. Help -> troubleshooting information -> open folder will launch windows explorer (or your equivalent), with it open at your profile directory.

[Mark246]

Thanks for your guidance, tanstaafl.
After looking at old files, and seeing what they are Supposed to look like,
I'm Sure that the Profiles.ini file is OK.
I'm also Sure that the Prefs.js file is bad.
So, I copied the prefs.js file from the 2-month-old backup,
edited it, so it points to jdu4h58d.Mark185, instead of hj38fj46.Mark184...
started Tbird, and it sorta' looks Good. The two accounts, and most folders are there.
There are some folders that should not be there, like...
popstate_1.dat but it's empty. Minor detail.
And some emails have been moved to different folders, from where I know they were.
That's not a big problem.
I did Not tell it to go get new messages.
The Biggest problem, now, is... For the two accounts,
the Inbox folders are there, and the upper window lists the emails that should be there.
However, neither the Headers, nor the body of the email appears in the Lower window.
That's only the case for the two Inbox folders.
All other folders show the emails, like they're supposed to.
That's just weird. What could cause that, and is there a solution?
Many thanks.
Mark246

[tanstaafl]

If you open a message in a new tab (for those two accounts) rather than read it in the message pane, does it look okay? I'm not suggesting it as a workaround, just trying to figure out dependencies.

Does the folder listing for those inboxes have reasonable looking subjects, senders and dates for the messages?

[Mark246]

Open an Inbox message in a new tab: the entire window is blank...
I see nothing related to that message. No headers, body, ... nuthin'.

The top window listing all the messages looks normal.
Subject, From, Recipient, Date... all look normal.

[tanstaafl]

Nothing rings a bell. I suggest you export one of the "bad" inbox folders as a mbox file using the ImportExportTools add-on and then import it into a child directory in "Local Folders". See if you can read those messages. If you can then we're probably talking about an account specific problem rather than a folder specific problem.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders has a short section on exporting folders too.

[Mark246]

Thanks for your continued help, tanstaafl.
I used ImportExportTools to export one Inbox, with 599 emails, 61 unread.
It created a file named Inbox, with no file extension, and Size ZERO !
To test, I also exported the Templates folder with 14 emails... the file has a reasonable Size.
I exported the other bad Inbox, with 2,130 emails, 87 unread.
It also created a file with size Zero.

PLEASE come up with some brilliant idea ! ?

[tanstaafl]

It sounds like the troublesome folders are corrupt in some way since the email client could fetch the information needed for the folder listing but the add-on couldn't discover any messages. See the "Recommended solution" section of http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recover_messa ... upt_folder . The Cut MboxD program sometimes fixes corruption. Even if it doesn't it might isolate the corruption into a different folder when you use it to split the folder into multiple folders.

[Mark246]

Well, the first suggestion at that link is to delete the Inbox.msf file. I renamed it, effectively the same thing.
While doing that, in the dj47dhr9.Mark185/Mail/(account) folder, I noticed that the Inbox file has Size Zero.
So, when I started Tbird, Nothing appeared in the Inbox, not even the list of the emails in the upper window.
Exited Tbird. It had created a new Inbox.msf file, size 2,343. The old msf file is size 491,488.
I renamed the Inbox.msf file, back to original condition, started Tbird, and the email list appears, but nothing else, just as before.
In the other (account) folder, the Inbox is also size Zero.
Crap. I'm guessing that means that there is no solution to this, other than going back to the 2-month-old backup. Crap.
Have ya' got any other brilliant ideas, tanstaafl? Please say Yes.

[tanstaafl]

I didn't suggest replacing the *.msf file. I suggested using the Cut MboxD program (per the recommended solution section).

"If a folder is not badly corrupted you can work around the problem by either deleting the index file (folder.msf). compacting the folder, or moving all of the messages to an empty folder and replacing the corrupt folder. This is described in Compacting folders. This article deals with what to do when that doesn't work and you can't recover many of the messages by copying/moving them."

[Mark246]

I DO appreciate your input, tanstaafl. I wasn't ignoring your suggestion.
I thought that the Size Zero Inbox file was a Big clue as to the problem.
OK... I went to that CutMboxD link, and it goes to apveening.a61.nl/software/.
Firefox gave a warning that it contains harmful programs.
I assumed that's irrelevant, trusted you, and clicked "ignore the risk".
The connection timed out. Firefox couldn't load the page.

Doesn't the Inbox file size of 0 mean that this problem is un-solvable?
Gee... it would be Great if you know of a solution...

[tanstaafl]

If the "inbox." file has a size of zero (in windows explorer/file explorer), than its empty. If the inbox folder has a size of zero, then it could be empty, or it could mean that Thunderbird didn't find any messages (regardless of the files size) so it reported a size of zero for the folder.

I got a ERR_CONNECTION_TIMED_OUT error too. See the Alternative solutions section. You could use the ImportExportTools add-on to try to split the mbox file (one per folder) into multiple .eml files (one per message), and then import the .EML files in small bunches to isolate which ones are broken.

[Mark246]

Waitaminute... There is no Inbox FOLDER. There are Inbox and Inbox.msf FILEs.
I Think that a Folder would exist only if there are Child-folders/files... yes?

Recall... I Did use ImportExportTools to export one Inbox, with 599 emails, 61 unread.
It created a file named Inbox, with no file extension, and Size ZERO ! But that was an MBOX format?

Regardless, I now tried the ImportExportTools to export the smaller Inbox as EML format.
It created 599 files, ALL of Size Zero.
?