If you don't have a profiles.ini then you haven't correctly followed the advice. This file is crucial to Thunderbird finding the appropriate profile. You may have one but don't see it because it's a hidden file and you haven't enabled display of hidden files.

Don't waste any more time looking for Windows registry files or in the registry for Thunderbird settings. Thunderbird doesn't use the Windows registry.

You need to either create a new empty profile, then copy the contents of your old profile over it, or copy your entire old profile and adjust profiles.ini to point at the old profile's new location.

The official help talks about using the profile manager to select the old profile. Doing this will create or edit profiles.ini for you, but for many users, starting Thunderbird via its profile manager is actually harder than just working with the profile via the usual file management tools provided with your operating system.

"If you don't have a profiles.ini then you haven't correctly followed the advice. This file is crucial to Thunderbird finding the appropriate profile." OK, I just found the file in - C:\Users\FF\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird Where it was located in Win XP I have no clue.

"You need to either create a new empty profile," How does one create an empty profile?

"then copy the contents of your old profile over it, " Sorry to be so slow, but what old profile. I do not have the profiles.ini that was on XP, I only backed up the Profiles folder and all that flowed from it.

"or copy your entire old profile and adjust profiles.ini to point at the old profile's new location." The new location would be at C:\Users\FF\AppData\Local\Thunderbird\Profiles right? Also, hHow does one adjust a profiles.ini?

Thanks.

OK, I have at C:\Users\FF\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\profiles.ini -

[General] StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0] Name=default IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/pf8j2npn.default

which points to- C:\Users\FF\AppData\Local\Thunderbird\Profiles\pf8j2npn.default which is where the old files were placed. Isn't this the right configuration? If so, why does Tbird not load my old emails, address book, etc.?

Another problem: The one account I set up can email out, but incoming is a no go.

Thanks for your time.

Umm, that looks OK. I was wondering if it had inserted an extra layer of folders; when moving from XP to W7 myself, I found it had separated the profile data into a new subfolder, Profiles, but you already have that and it's correctly declared in the profiles.ini file.

I'm puzzled. Just to check, the folder named pf8j2npn.default should contain, amongst other things, folders named Mail and ImapMail, and files such as prefs.js, abook.mab and history.mab

Could you post your settings here please?

In Thunderbird, Help|Troubleshooting Information.

Clear the "include account names" checkbox. Click the "copy text to clipboard" button, use paste (ctrl+v) to paste into your next reply here. Feel free to chop out anything you consider too personal (but please leave server names), and we don't need all the stuff about fonts and printers. But I'm not expecting it to list very many accounts. :-(

Ok, Info is below. I still have not seen any test emails come in to this account, but they have not bounced. My wife has had past problems w email taking 24-48 hours to arrive via ATT and I had continual problem w the ATT account experiencing difficulty recognizing my password back at XP. It would throw up a couple of popups daily. I would click the buttons and then it would be OK. I would like to install one of my non-ATT accounts to see if Thunderbird is installed properly, but am afraid it will add a layer of complexity to getting to the bottom of this. I had expected that all my accounts would have transferred and be ready to roll. Anyway, here is the Info (I see a note that the graphics driver should be updated, so will have to look into that). Thanks much for your interest.

Application Basics

   Name: Thunderbird
   Version: 24.5.0
   User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.5.0
   Profile Folder: Show Folder

             (Local drive)
   Application Build ID: 20140424091057
   Enabled Plugins: about:plugins
   Build Configuration: about:buildconfig
   Crash Reports: about:crashes
   Memory Use: about:memory

 Mail and News Accounts
   account1:
     INCOMING: account1, , (pop3) inbound.att.net:995, SSL, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: outbound.att.net:465, SSL, passwordCleartext, true

   account2:
     INCOMING: account2, , (none) Local Folders, plain, passwordCleartext

 Extensions

 Important Modified Preferences

   Name: Value

     browser.cache.disk.capacity: 358400
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run: false
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max: false
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size_cached_value: 358400
     extensions.lastAppVersion: 24.5.0
     font.internaluseonly.changed: true
     font.name.monospace.el: Consolas
     font.name.monospace.tr: Consolas
     font.name.monospace.x-baltic: Consolas
     font.name.monospace.x-central-euro: Consolas
     font.name.monospace.x-cyrillic: Consolas
     font.name.monospace.x-unicode: Consolas
     font.name.monospace.x-western: Consolas
     font.name.sans-serif.el: Calibri
     font.name.sans-serif.tr: Calibri
     font.name.sans-serif.x-baltic: Calibri
     font.name.sans-serif.x-central-euro: Calibri
     font.name.sans-serif.x-cyrillic: Calibri
     font.name.sans-serif.x-unicode: Calibri
     font.name.sans-serif.x-western: Calibri
     font.name.serif.el: Cambria
     font.name.serif.tr: Cambria
     font.name.serif.x-baltic: Cambria
     font.name.serif.x-central-euro: Cambria
     font.name.serif.x-cyrillic: Cambria
     font.name.serif.x-unicode: Cambria
     font.name.serif.x-western: Cambria
     font.size.fixed.el: 14
     font.size.fixed.tr: 14
     font.size.fixed.x-baltic: 14
     font.size.fixed.x-central-euro: 14
     font.size.fixed.x-cyrillic: 14
     font.size.fixed.x-unicode: 14
     font.size.fixed.x-western: 14
     font.size.variable.el: 17
     font.size.variable.tr: 17
     font.size.variable.x-baltic: 17
     font.size.variable.x-central-euro: 17
     font.size.variable.x-cyrillic: 17
     font.size.variable.x-unicode: 17
     font.size.variable.x-western: 17
     mail.openMessageBehavior.version: 1
     mail.winsearch.enable: true
     mail.winsearch.firstRunDone: true
     mail.winsearch.global_reindex_time: 1401304755
     mailnews.database.global.datastore.id: 7e88267e-11f4-4440-8b25-5e00812f7e5
     network.cookie.prefsMigrated: true
     places.database.lastMaintenance: 1401300580
     places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages: 103928

 Graphics

     Adapter Description: Intel(R) Q45/Q43 Express Chipset
     Vendor ID: 0x8086
     Device ID: 0x2e12
     Adapter RAM: Unknown
     Adapter Drivers: igdumd64 igd10umd64 igdumdx32 igd10umd32
     Driver Version: 8.15.10.2086
     Driver Date: 2-20-2010
     Direct2D Enabled: Blocked for your graphics driver version. Try updating your graphics driver to version 8.1500.1000.2202 or newer.
     DirectWrite Enabled: false (6.2.9200.16492)
     ClearType Parameters: ClearType parameters not found
     WebGL Renderer: false
     GPU Accelerated Windows: 0

     AzureCanvasBackend: skia
     AzureFallbackCanvasBackend: cairo
     AzureContentBackend: none

 JavaScript

 Incremental GC: 1

 Accessibility

   Activated: 0
   Prevent Accessibility: 0

 Library Versions

     Expected minimum version
     Version in use

     NSPR
     4.10.2
     4.10.2

     NSS
     3.15.4 Basic ECC
     3.15.4 Basic ECC

     NSS Util
     3.15.4
     3.15.4

     NSS SSL
     3.15.4 Basic ECC
     3.15.4 Basic ECC

     NSS S/MIME
     3.15.4 Basic ECC
     3.15.4 Basic ECC

Forgot to mention, pf8j2npn.default does contain, amongst other things, folders named Mail and ImapMail, and files such as prefs.js, abook.mab and history.mab.

New Info data after updating graphics driver and adding a 2nd account (with dif incoming server). Still no test mail arriv, but outgoing works.

 Application Basics

   Name: Thunderbird
   Version: 24.5.0
   User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.5.0
   Profile Folder: Show Folder

             (Local drive)
   Application Build ID: 20140424091057
   Enabled Plugins: about:plugins
   Build Configuration: about:buildconfig
   Crash Reports: about:crashes
   Memory Use: about:memory

 Mail and News Accounts
   account1:
     INCOMING: account1, , (pop3) inbound.att.net:110, alwaysSTARTTLS, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: outbound.att.net:465, SSL, passwordCleartext, true

   account2:
     INCOMING: account2, , (none) Local Folders, plain, passwordCleartext

   account3:
     INCOMING: account3, , (pop3) --deleted--.net:110, plain, passwordCleartext
     OUTGOING: outbound.att.net:465, SSL, passwordCleartext, true

 Extensions

 Important Modified Preferences

   Name: Value

     browser.cache.disk.capacity: 358400
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size.first_run: false
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size.use_old_max: false
     browser.cache.disk.smart_size_cached_value: 358400
     extensions.lastAppVersion: 24.5.0
     
     mail.openMessageBehavior.version: 1
     mail.winsearch.enable: true
     mail.winsearch.firstRunDone: true
     mail.winsearch.global_reindex_time: 1401304755
     mailnews.database.global.datastore.id: 7e88267e-11f4-4440-8b25-5e00812f7e5
     network.cookie.prefsMigrated: true
     places.database.lastMaintenance: 1401300580
     places.history.expiration.transient_current_max_pages: 103928
     plugin.importedState: true

 Graphics

     Adapter Description: Intel(R) Q45/Q43 Express Chipset
     Vendor ID: 0x8086
     Device ID: 0x2e12
     Adapter RAM: Unknown
     Adapter Drivers: igdumd64 igd10umd64 igdumdx32 igd10umd32
     Driver Version: 8.15.10.2869
     Driver Date: 10-4-2012
     Direct2D Enabled: false
     DirectWrite Enabled: false (6.2.9200.16492)
     ClearType Parameters: ClearType parameters not found
     WebGL Renderer: false
     GPU Accelerated Windows: 0

     AzureCanvasBackend: skia
     AzureFallbackCanvasBackend: cairo
     AzureContentBackend: none

 JavaScript

 Incremental GC: 1

 Accessibility

   Activated: 0
   Prevent Accessibility: 0

 Library Versions

     Expected minimum version
     Version in use

     NSPR
     4.10.2
     4.10.2

     NSS
     3.15.4 Basic ECC
     3.15.4 Basic ECC

     NSS Util
     3.15.4
     3.15.4

     NSS SSL
     3.15.4 Basic ECC
     3.15.4 Basic ECC

     NSS S/MIME
     3.15.4 Basic ECC
     3.15.4 Basic ECC

I notice that there is a difference between the two sets of information. These are the settings you require.

• server name: inbound.att.net
• port: 995
• Connection Security: SSL/TLS
• Authentication method : normal password

Actually, the settings you recommend are those that I have been using w almost every experiment (?). Unfortunately, in the interim we developed an additional problem (TB freezing) and have started a new thread at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1004174#answer-585029 to dig ourselves out. Thanks.

I came up with a method that solved my original question. It is posted at https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1004174