A very SERIOUS flaw with Thunderbird
Windows 10. I had a power failure today and when the machine came back up, I was at the "create new account" screen for thunderbird.
EVERY SINGLE EMAIL ACCOUNT was blown away. Oh yes, All the key files and mail data itself was still there but NO access to it.
So after much googling and reading some of the most stupidest answers on here I had no choice but to recreate EVERY account and then move the message files into the newly created -1 folders in the VERY SAME PROFILE folder when all the original stuff lived.
How can this be? How is it possible that a hard crash can be so detrimental to a very old and well established format known as email?
All Replies (4)
This issue is explained here: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_a_profile_that_suddenly_disappeared including several ways to repair it. In your case, replacing prefs.js with a recent version prefs-N.js is probably the quickest and easiest method.
"including several ways to repair it."
Seriously? Remeber, a power failure caused the computer to become non functional. A AC restore, caused the computer to become functional. Upon restoration, a complete failure of the Thunderbird mail system occurred. Your answers to restore this situation are weak at best as they do not function. You neglected the corrupt, damaged or otherwise none valid profiles.ini file. | Please, if you are to provide "useful" resolves, ensure that they are indeed useful.
re :How is it possible that a hard crash can be so detrimental to a very old and well established format known as email?
Any opened and in use file can become corrupted when a computer suddenly fails. In fact, it would seem several files were effected hence the need to restore.
When you shut down your computer, it is supposed to close out any files it has open properly (or give you the chance to do so). When this doesn’t happen—like, say, if you lose power or if your computer crashes—it doesn’t have the chance to close files the right way. This can lead to the corruption of any files that were currently open, including not just your documents, but even operating system files.
Regarding Thunderbird....
Sometimes, if old profile cannot be opened, a new profile is created. However, it may also have been possible to use the information at the link to point a new profile to an old profile and resolve the situation. As the old profile was obviously intact, then the situation can be remedied.
But another senario: If a 'prefs' file within a profile became corrupted due to computer failure whilst that file was opened, then a new prefs file may have been generated which made it appear like an empty profile, but if you had asked then I would have suggested checking the number of prefs files, so that a simple swap to older prefs file and restart would have displayed everything again.
re : You neglected the corrupt, damaged or otherwise none valid profiles.ini file.
The 'profiles.ini' file was not necessarilly corrupted as already explained, it just might have been unable to access the profile as another file was empty, but it is impossible to speculate as no information is available.
The info you were supplied with was good, useful; a tried and tested fix, but the point is moot, since you had already resolved by an entirely different, but perhaps more lengthy manner. It is a solution so well done on your part.
You could have asked a question on how to fix and after posting relevant info which you may be asked to provide, a more targetted suggestion for a fix would be supplied.
Basically, in answer to the question, it is not a serious flaw in Thunderbird if your computer crashed or shut down unexpectedly due to power failure and opened files were corrupted.