TB Always Starts with New Welcome to TB Screen

[skuddle]

My system:
Acer Aspire TC 780
Win10 20h2
Firefox 84.0.2
Thunderbird 78.6

I'm having problems with Thunderbird...

I reinstalled TB, connected it to my email POP server, and restored my entire saved TB. Everything works. I have my emails and my address book. (I restore them by closing TB, deleting the TB folder from the C: drive, and replacing that folder with the TB folder I previously saved.)

But when I put the computer to sleep, wake it up the next morning, and start TB, I get the Welcome to Thunderbird screen. No emails, no address book. Exactly like a brand new installation. I've even uninstalled TB and reinstalled it by downloading it from the internet.)

I've reinstalled TB 3 times over the last day or so and always get the same results. TB starts with a blank profile.

How do I get TB to accept my saved address book and emails?

[DanRaisch]

It sounds as though TB is not locating your intended profile after the restoration of the saved data. Make sure that file profiles.ini points to the correct directory location. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profiles.ini_file

Also check the file prefs.js to ensure that it identifies the correct location for your message files -- http://kb.mozillazine.org/Prefs.js_file

[tanstaafl]

You can use about:profiles in help -> troubleshooting information to see what profiles it knows about and set the default profile by clicking on the "set as default profile" button for the desired profile. If it sees the right profile(s) only then do you need to consider whether there is a problem with the profiles prefs.js file.

See if the problem goes away if you use hibernate rather than sleep. See https://www.groovypost.com/howto/enable ... indows-10/ for how to enable that feature if its not available. Try that after you managed to temporarily get Thunderbird to find your profile again.

If you suspect a problem with profiles.ini see http://kb.mozillazine.org/Running_from_ ... hunderbird for how to specify the profiles location using command line arguments, rather than profiles.ini. That doesn't require a USB drive, just that you know the full path to the profile. You can get that (when Thunderbird is able to find your profile) using help -> troubleshooting information and clicking on the Open Folder button by "Profile Folder". That will launch windows explorer, open to the current profile.