Warning re Thunderbird 78
For information, I run Kaspersky Internet Security on my machine. It has a function called Software Updater which looks for updates to apps you have installed, and updates them for you unless you turn it off. This does not normally cause a problem. However, Kaspersky automatically updated Mozilla Thunderbird 68 to version 78 without any warnings at all. I have lost 12 years of current and archived emails across 12 email accounts, in the blink of an eye. To say I'm cross is an understatement. It wasn't until I looked at the Thunderbird website that I saw that version 78 was available at all, along with the warnings about the database structure not being compatible with earlier versions. Don't get caught out. Let everyone you know that this could be them. I have contacted Kaspersky to alert them to this and they have kindly said they will look at putting a block on this program.
All Replies (6)
See if it has just created a new profile and you need to select the correct one.
Help > Troubleshooting Information Near the Bottom of 'Application Basics' section - Profiles - click on 'about:profiles' It opens in new tab
It will list the profiles. eg: Profile: default-release Profile: default Profile: Default User
Under each profile name it will say:
- Default Profile: yes or no
- Root directory:
- Local directory:
The current default profile will have a 'Rename' button below the profile.
Other profiles will show additional options. Locate the correct profile and click on the 'Set as default profile' button.
Exit Thunderbird and then restart. It should open on the old profile.
Apologies - I got "Server Error 500" when I posted this so I assumed it wasn't accepted.
Thanks - everything was there - all my folders and emails, but they were all empty - new emails were also empty - no body text. Just the title, addressee etc. My profile had the correct name so it must have overwritten it.
Please restart Thunderbird in Safe Mode and report back on results.
Please state all the addons you use.
In Thunderbird
- Help > Troubleshooting Information
- click on 'Open Folder' button
a new window opens showing contents of profile name folder
- Exit Thunderbird now.
- Delete this file : xulstore.json
Start Thunderbird.
Please report back on results.
Thank you for your advice. I came here, after the event, to warn others of my experience. My action was to completely uninstall the program, and I then reinstalled a download of version 68. Using the advice from Google searches, and an old backup I managed to locate, I have got my mail system going again, with data from January 2020 onwards missing. I appreciate your advice but regret that it is not possible to interrogate my system now. I believe that my old profile was imported into v78 but didn't meet the new database design, and so only the message shells and folders were visible. New emails arrived OK but again, had no content. As we are generally left to our own devices when using downloaded software, I did check to see if anyone else had the same problem. The information I saw was mainly "DO NOT UPGRADE TO V78 - IT DESTROYS YOUR PROFILE". As it was an automatic update not instigated by me, I assumed the worst and uninstalled the program completely because the only profile V78 was using had the same name as my previous V68 profile, so I assumed it had been overwritten. Then I came here to warn other users in case they also had Kaspersky auto update switched on. Thank you for trying for me. The best thing that can happen now is for someone to add "BACKUP" to the File Menu for simple folk like me to use regularly.