Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded.

[thebigconsultant]

I am having a problem on my machine.

When I try to lead Thunderbird I get the error message "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible."

The program itself will not progress past this dialogue box



I have Googled for answers and work-throughs, but I just cant make any progress and it is infuriating me! .. I run a small business, http://www.thebigconsultant.com so this is a huge pain.

Can anybody help me?

Kind regards,
John Biddleston

[tanstaafl]

I've never heard of that before. Normally if it can't find the profile it automatically creates a skeleton of one and runs the new account wizard. What version are you running?

If Thunderbird crashes it may leave a profile.lock file in your profile. That will prevent Thunderbird from starting, but normally will either silently fail or return an error message about the profile is in use. See if you have a profile.lock file in your profile. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_in_use

Your best bet might be to delete the profiles.ini file for Thunderbird (make certain you don't delete the one for Firefox instead) and then follow the instructions in http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_p ... hunderbird to use the profile manager to tell it again where your profile is.

[thebigconsultant]

I've never heard of that before. Normally if it can't find the profile it automatically creates a skeleton of one and runs the new account wizard. What version are you running?

Thanks for your reply, I am running 16.0.2

If Thunderbird crashes it may leave a profile.lock file in your profile. That will prevent Thunderbird from starting, but normally will either silently fail or return an error message about the profile is in use. See if you have a profile.lock file in your profile. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_in_use

I tried this, but there is no profile.lock file on the hard drive. I did an extensive search and scan. So I am guessing that this is not the issue.

Your best bet might be to delete the profiles.ini file for Thunderbird (make certain you don't delete the one for Firefox instead) and then follow the instructions in http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_p ... hunderbird to use the profile manager to tell it again where your profile is.

I have re-named the profile.ini file to profile.ini_old and now Thunderbird starts, but there is no folders, accounts or data.

I have launched the Profile Manager using the command thunderbird -profilemanager, however the dialogue box only gives me the option of selecting "Default"

It looks exactly like this


I have no idea how to find the old profile or data and load it in.

I am reading this information http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder but I am finding it very confusing?

[tanstaafl]

Use advanced search in windows explorer to find "abook.mab". That is your personal address book, and should be in the top directory within your profile.

I suggest you look at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_p ... hunderbird instead of http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder as the former is Thunderbird specific. If you have the same problem understanding the Thunderbird specific version of that article please try to explain whats confusing (or at least what part of the article is confusing) and I'll try to improve that article. I wrote that article and know it can be confusing, but need feedback in order to improve it.

[thebigconsultant]

Use advanced search in windows explorer to find "abook.mab". That is your personal address book, and should be in the top directory within your profile.

I suggest you look at http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_p ... hunderbird instead of http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder as the former is Thunderbird specific. If you have the same problem understanding the Thunderbird specific version of that article please try to explain whats confusing (or at least what part of the article is confusing) and I'll try to improve that article. I wrote that article and know it can be confusing, but need feedback in order to improve it.

Hi, thankyou

I have found the "abook.mab" files.

However, I have them in several locations and would like to try loading the profiles from those folders in one at a time to see if it is the right one.

From the info in http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_p ... hunderbird it looks like you do the following steps:-

1. Create a blank new folder as your default profile

2. Copy the contents of the other (chosen) profile in there

3. Edit the .ini file to make sure that the path is correct?

[thebigconsultant]

Ok.

I have managed to get it all back.

I had to edit the ini file. And put in the location of the files, which I keep on a separate drive.

The information worked.

However, it is a shame that the ThunderBird Profile Manager, is limited in the way that it is. ... Surely, it should be designed to browse to alternate folder locations and also edit the ini file using dialogues?

Anyway, thank you for your help.

The problem is now fixed!!

P.S. I suspect that the problem happened when the drive letters on my computer changed without me being aware of this. I probably removed a hard drive, and Windows decided to assign new drive letters. ... Silly silly windows!!

Kind regards,
John

[blouis79]

I had the problem due to an unused profile in the .ini file. Used to have the profile folder on a separate drive with more space, due to previous server with users on C: with too small a partition. Having upgraded drive and moved to a new server, moved the profile folder back onto C: prior to migrate and changed in profile manager. After migration, ini file still had a reference the the previous profile folder, not copied over to a new server. This caused the error message. Deleting the lines containing the reference to the old profile in the .ini file fixed it for me.

[thebigconsultant]

I had the problem due to an unused profile in the .ini file. Used to have the profile folder on a separate drive with more space, due to previous server with users on C: with too small a partition. Having upgraded drive and moved to a new server, moved the profile folder back onto C: prior to migrate and changed in profile manager. After migration, ini file still had a reference the the previous profile folder, not copied over to a new server. This caused the error message. Deleting the lines containing the reference to the old profile in the .ini file fixed it for me.

Thank you for the info.

[LIMPET235]

Ulrike Hill,
I split your post off to here...
> viewtopic.php?f=39&t=2846177

Please check the date before posting to these old threads.
Thanks.

Locking.