HELP, PLEASE: All of my profiles disappeared!

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Mark246
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Joined: March 26th, 2007, 11:13 pm

HELP, PLEASE: All of my profiles disappeared!

Post by Mark246 »

HELP, PLEASE: All of my profiles disappeared!
On Windows 7, SP1, and a current version of Thunderbird...
I wanted to open up an old profile, so I created a new profile,
and I was going to copy the old folder contents to the new folder.
That's what is recommended...
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_ ... hunderbird
All of my currently used profiles are in a folder called "Tbird profiles".
They were each in individual folders, called... like...
3gdhf65g.work
h586jd73.play
etc...
When I created the new profile, using Profile Manager, I named it "oldpro",
and put it in the "Tbird profiles" folder, BUT...
Tbird did not create a separate folder for it, like 4hgfj5h4.oldpro.
Instead, it put all of the files and folders for oldpro
directly into the "Tbird profiles" folder.
I didn't like that, so I deleted the "oldpro" profile using Profile Manager.
IT DELETED ALL OF THE FILES AND FOLDERS FOR ALL OF MY PROFILES.
It basically deleted everything in the "Tbird profiles" folder.
That includes all of my emails, for several years, in several profiles.
PLEASE tell me there's a way to recover all of that data.
I looked in the Recycle bin... nothing of value there.

HELP, PLEASE !

Mark246
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tanstaafl
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Re: HELP, PLEASE: All of my profiles disappeared!

Post by tanstaafl »

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Transferring_ ... hunderbird is not intended for moving an existing profile. Its meant for when you give up trying to fix a problem and want to salvage what you can to reuse in a new profile. Did you create the backup of the existing profile before doing anything, like it recommended?

If you deleted a profile using the profile manager it should have only modified profiles.ini unless you explicitly pressed the "delete files" button in the popup window that is displayed after you press the delete profile button. It defaults to the "don't delete files" button. The profiles.ini file is used to tell Thunderbird what profiles exist and where they are. Even if you manually edited profiles.ini and made a fatal mistake the actual profiles should still be there, even if Thunderbird knows nothing about them.

It sounds like you chose a poor location for your oldpro profile (as it has all of your other profiles in child directories) but that shouldn't have deleted any of the other profiles since Thunderbird has no reason to write or delete those child directories. Thunderbird typically ignores unexpected files / child directories.

If you chose a poor location for the oldpro profile that included all of the other profiles as child directories in it, deleted the oldpro profile and also pressed the delete files button when doing that, that would explain why you lost everything when deleting one profile.

How did you determine that you lost everything? Seriously. Did you try using advanced file search in windows explorer to search for any directory that has both a prefs.js and a abook.mab file (making certain its configured to show hidden items, and not to hide anything due to certain file extensions etc.)?

You could try using a file recovery utility such as Pandora Recovery. See http://www.snapfiles.com/get/pandora_recovery.html. Your chances are much better if you have downloaded very little since you lost your profiles. I suggest you temporarily disable your disk cache in Firefox for example (rely upon the memory cache) while figuring out what to do.

Unfortunately http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_a_ ... isappeared doesn't really apply to your problem. But it has some background information you may find useful.
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tanstaafl
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Re: HELP, PLEASE: All of my profiles disappeared!

Post by tanstaafl »

Did you have POP or IMAP accounts? The reason I ask is IMAP accounts normally store all of the messages on the mail server. Losing the optional offline folders (that contain a sync'd copy of the remote folders) is no big deal, they would be re-created automatically.

If you had POP accounts and "leave messages on the server" in the accounts server settings was checked you might be able to automatically recover some of them if you add the account again. It depends whether "for at most X days" was also checked, and what X was set to.
Mark246
Posts: 72
Joined: March 26th, 2007, 11:13 pm

Re: HELP, PLEASE: All of my profiles disappeared!

Post by Mark246 »

Thanks very much for the reply, Tanstaafl.
Looks like I did Everything wrong that I possibly could have.

I did not make a current backup of the profiles that have disappeared.
I do have backups from about 4 months ago, so... that's something.

I deleted oldpro in the Profile Manager, With the "delete files" option.
I wanted to start over, clean, so I didn't want to keep anything related to that oldpro.

I thought Tbird would make another child directory for oldpro,
like it did for the other profiles. I thought wrong. :(

Xplorer2 tells me that the Tbird profiles folder is empty.
Actually, that's not quite true...
There is one folder in there, called "was work".
Sometimes I copy a profile, and name it like that.
That has a child folder called h5y688dg.work.
That has a child, called Mail. That is empty.

A Windows Stert / Search for "work" in the Tbird profiles folder gives nothing of value.

I am basically not using that PC, for fear of overwriting any sectors of the disk
where those files may still be recoverable.
Starting Tbird, it automatically goes to the Profile Manager,
so that I can choose which of several profiles to use.
Those deleted profile names are still showing, but when I tried to open any of them, it says
"Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible."

All POP accounts. But maybe that "leave messages on the server" part will help a bit.

OK,... I'll try something with Pandora-Recovery, or maybe Piriform Recuva.

In other saved profiles, there are about 50 files, and 7 or 8 folders, each with many child folders.
Will I need to restore ALL of those things?

Again, thanks for the advice.
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tanstaafl
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Re: HELP, PLEASE: All of my profiles disappeared!

Post by tanstaafl »

You will need to delete the profiles.ini file before you can use Thunderbird again, since it had bad links to deleted profiles. This is probably due to the other profiles being deleted as a side effect of your deleting the files in the one profile you deleted. Thunderbird will create a new profiles.ini and a stub of a new profile the next time you start it. If you have a 4 month old backup of a profile you could probably copy its prefs.js file over the corresponding file in the stub, rather than adding the accounts again via the new account wizard. You could also copy any address books (*.mab files) from the old profile.

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders for how to import mail folders. You can import a entire directory tree in one step.
Mark246
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Joined: March 26th, 2007, 11:13 pm

Re: HELP, PLEASE: All of my profiles disappeared!

Post by Mark246 »

First,... some helpful info... my motherboard died about 4 months ago, so when I replaced it,
I also inserted a new 1TB HDD. I made the C drive 300GB, and the D drive 700GB.
I put Windows and all downloaded programs on the C drive... stuff that can easily be re-created.
All of my DATA is kept on the D drive, including the Tbird Profiles folder.
I THINK that the D Drive has been changed very little... that very few sectors have been overwritten.
I downloaded both Pandora-Recovery and Piriform Recuva (onto the C Drive).
Tried to install Pandora Recovery... the install pgm cannot even start...
"because rtl190.bpl is missing from your computer. Try reinstalling the pgm to fix this problem."
Research reveals that this Might be because it needs to run on a 32-bit system? I'm running Win 7, 64-bit.
And... Google cannot find that rtl190 file... it's apparently embedded into the install EXE file?
Besides... "Pandora Recovery" is no longer available from the PandoraRecovery.com website.
It is now called "Disk Drill". And the free version will recover only up to 1 GB.
So, I ran Piriform Recuva. It found 3680 files, only 38 of which are NOT rated as "Excellent, no overwritten clusters".
The files vary in size from 1 byte to 4,152,976 KB, and the total of the files in my Tbird Profiles folder is 54 GB.
Way too much for the free "Pandora Recovery" / "Disk Drill".
Recuva recovered ALL (except the 38)... but there's a problem... they're ALL in ONE folder.
Before recovering, Recuva tells me the folder that the recoverable files are in.
I think I'll need to run it 20 or 30 more times, for each individual folder that I want.
Have ya' got any better ideas?
Thanks very much for your time, and knowledge.
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tanstaafl
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Re: HELP, PLEASE: All of my profiles disappeared!

Post by tanstaafl »

The important files are prefs.js (settings) , *.mab files (address books) and text files named after the mail folder but with NO file extension (mbox files that contain the messages for the corresponding folder). For example, the messages for your inbox folder are in "inbox.", not inbox.msf or inbox.sbd. Everything else is either unimportant or can be automatically generated.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Importing_folders
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_addres ... n_profiles
Mark246
Posts: 72
Joined: March 26th, 2007, 11:13 pm

Re: HELP, PLEASE: All of my profiles disappeared!

Post by Mark246 »

Thanks for that info, Tanstaafl.

Some success, and some Weird happenings...
Still, I hope that this might be helpful to others who have a similar problem...
I ran Piriform Recuva (several times, once for each folder) to recover everything that I thought would be useful from
the deleted Tbird profile folders... All the files from the root folder, and in the Mail / Local Folders child folders.
I put those folders / files in a TEMP folder called "for NewPro22".
Problem: some of the Biggest files were not recoverable, like... Inbox, and a folder where I automatically filter/place some incoming emails...
they were just over 1Gb in size. So, it was necessary to recover those folders from the 4-month-old backup.
For some reason, those older files (about the same size) were still recoverable. :?:

I created a new profile, called "NewPro22". Started Tbird for that new profile. Exited Tbird immediately.
The profile folder already has a bunch of folders and files in it. OK... I'm sure that's normal.
I copied files and folders from the Temp folder to the new profile, in the appropriate places.
It seems to have worked quite well. My address book seems to be complete.

The Weird part... almost all of the folders that appear in the left pane show in normal text.
But, as soon as I click on that folder name, to see what's in it, the folder name changes to Bold text, and it shows that...
anywhere from 1% to 20% of the emails in that folder have Not been previously read.
That's just not true. I've opened / looked at all of those emails.
Of course, this is not a big problem... I can Tell Tbird to mark them as Read, but,... WHY would that happen?

Weird #2: Piriform Recuva did not find some of the folders that I know were there.
I'll try to find some other (free?) file recovery programs out there. Any suggestions?

Thanks very much for your assistance.
Mark246
Posts: 72
Joined: March 26th, 2007, 11:13 pm

Re: HELP, PLEASE: All of my profiles disappeared!

Post by Mark246 »

An update...
FINISHED the restoration process, as well as I think it can be done.
The four large unrecoverable files remain unrecoverable from the erased disk.
The 4-month-old backup is the best I could restore for those 4 files. Bummer, but not catastrophic.

I had mentioned that the Recuva pgm did not find a file that Was there... wrong... it found it, but it was renamed.
The file called "buy-sell-ebay-craigslist" was -for some unknown reason- renamed to "buy65hguid74655h".
But it was there, and it still had all of the recoverable emails.

A TIP: After restoring everything that can be restored, and before clicking "Get Messages",
click on every folder, so that Tbird can figure out which emails are in there.
It will say that some of the emails are Un-read... so what... minor detail... ignore that part.
IF You Do Not Do That, then the Filters that you have previously created will not be able to automatically put
incoming emails into the appropriate folders.

Also, for the future, try to keep all files below 1 GB in size.
That will greatly increase the probability that they will be recoverable after a problem like this.

While I Really DO appreciate your input, Tansaafl, I think you should re-evaluate your recommendation of the Pandora Recovery / Disk Drill pgm.
With that pgm, you cannot specify a certain folder to scan... must scan the entire drive.
Has a Terrible interface. After the scan, you cannot see or find what you want.
It only shows files that it found that are in certain categories, like Pictures, Videos, Audio, etc...
And it doesn't give the original file names. It renames everything File00001 , File00002, etc...
IMHO, That pgm is crap. OR, did I run it in some incorrect manner?

I also tried Piriform Recuva and Puran File Recovery and Auslogics File Recovery and Glary Undelete, as well as the Pandora thing.
Puran found the 4 needed files... with 0 byte lengths.
Auslogics kept a running total of what it was doing... for about 30 minutes.
After 13 hours, the numbers had not changed. And Task Manager was needed to cancel the pgm.
Glary found the 4 needed files... with 0 byte lengths.
Piriform found the 4 needed files, WITH some realistic file sizes... but they were not recoverable.
It said the "File's data could not be found on the disk."
Still, I think that Piriform is the best, most informative option.

I love this forum.
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tanstaafl
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Re: HELP, PLEASE: All of my profiles disappeared!

Post by tanstaafl »

Sorry you didn't recover anything. I'm not very concerned about how fast any of these programs are, I'd just like to find one that works reliably.

I think you should re-evaluate your recommendation of the Pandora Recovery / Disk Drill pgm. With that pgm, you cannot specify a certain folder to scan... must scan the entire drive.

The manufacturers web page for the current version states: "To begin scanning without any advanced options click “Recover”, Disk drill will begin recovering deleted files from your drive with the best available scanning method. You can click the “Arrow” next to the drive to manually recover with Quick Scan (faster) or Deep Scan (thorough)." I just installed the latest free version and verified that option exists.

The reason I didn't recommend Piriform's Recuva is because almost everybody tries using it, and I can't remember anybody who used it getting anything useful back.
Mark246
Posts: 72
Joined: March 26th, 2007, 11:13 pm

Re: HELP, PLEASE: All of my profiles disappeared!

Post by Mark246 »

I was actually able to recover almost everything, Tanstaafl.
Everything was found and recovered, Except for those 4 large files.
You mentioned the speed of the pgms. I also don't care about that, but... an interesting piece of info...
the Glary Undelete pgm ran for a total of less than 5 seconds. And it basically arrived at the same conclusion.
A Main reason why I dislike the Pandora pgm is that it renames the files to File0001, File0002, etc...
THAT makes it Really difficult to find what you need to recover.
And Piriform was the Only pgm that told me the real filename AND the file size (even though they were unrecoverable).
I'd still vote for Piriform... it gave me Very Useful stuff.
Thanks very much for your expertise.
Mark246
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tanstaafl
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Re: HELP, PLEASE: All of my profiles disappeared!

Post by tanstaafl »

"I was actually able to recover almost everything"

That is good to know. I'll remember your comments about Piriform.
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