profile cannot be loaded

User Help for Mozilla Thunderbird
Post Reply
aajax
Posts: 119
Joined: August 5th, 2008, 11:48 am

profile cannot be loaded

Post by aajax »

On Windows 7 with pretty up to date version of Thunderbird (Tbird), Tbird won't start. I cannot think of anything unusual that accompanies this event.

There are 2 errors that are displayed in dialogue boxes which display as follows:

Message says "Thunderbird is already running but not responding. The old Thunderbird process must be closed to open a new window". When you then select the button which says "Close Thunderbird", I'm shown another dialogue box which says "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible".

Curiously if I start the Tbird profile manager by running the command -

thunderbird.exe -ProfileManager

the profile seems to be found without any difficulty. However, if I try to use it to start Tbird the above error sequence is repeated.

From searching on these forums I found some article suggesting that there may be something wrong with the "profiles.ini" file. After spending a lot of time looking I can find no such file on the computer. This causes me to think that Tbird must be using a registry key to help with the start-up discovery process. Can anyone advise about such?

It may be worth pointing out that I have my computer configured with multiple partitions and the Thunderbird profiles have been relocated to a different disk than the one used to start Windows and in which the Tbird software is installed. This has been functioning fine on this computer for at least 5 years now. Of course something that is constantly being changed is the Tbird software.

I do have a functioning Tbird on an old WXP computer that seems to work which says it is running Tbird 45.4.0. I've archived the profile using 7zip and could easily restore to the troublesome W7 computer but thought it might make sense to get some expert advice before starting to hack too wildly.
User avatar
DanRaisch
Moderator
Posts: 127187
Joined: September 23rd, 2004, 8:57 pm
Location: Somewhere on the right coast

Re: profile cannot be loaded

Post by DanRaisch »

See if this article is of any help -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_a_ ... isappeared
aajax
Posts: 119
Joined: August 5th, 2008, 11:48 am

Re: profile cannot be loaded

Post by aajax »

It appears that this problem was caused by some unintended alteration of the permissions for the drive on which the profile was stored. While I cannot explain how this was changed I did have a bit of a battle trying to share a different partition on my network. My best guess is that some misstep occurred in that battle. Of course Windows permissions are about as difficult to grasp as any subject I've ever tried to learn.

Possibly something I should have also mentioned is that I try to setup Windows such that it is operated with a user account that does not have administrator authority. I suspect that most Windows users operate their computer using an account with administrator privileges that would likely preclude such a problem from happening to them. Unfortunately, very few software developers consider what is involved to run Windows with less than administrator authority.

However, with respect to the symptoms reported herein the take away is that having permission to write/modify files must be a requirement for being able to start Thunderbird. Recognizing all of what is kept in a profile, it is understandable why write permission would be required. However, one could also imagine that limiting the scope of what needs to be written (i.e., simplification of required setup) in order to get Tbird just to start-up would be a worthy design consideration.
Post Reply