Windows 10 PC crash took out Thunderbird
My Windows 10 PC crashed hard two weeks ago, trashing 3 hard disks, Windows 10, Thunderbird and much other software. After the crash and a restart, Windows 10 sort of ran, but the Start button was the only icon showing in the Taskbar. Clicking the Start button resulted in a white screen and no further response. However, some software still more or less functioned, but was clearly broken. When I fired up Thunderbird after the crash, all of the mail Folders were wrong, and it loaded more than 2 years worth of old emails from Comcast. If I remember right, about 2 years ago I made Thunderbird use IMAP rather than POP; IMAP retains emails on the server.
Since the crashed machine had hardware 11 years old, I bought a new motherboard, processor, etc. and a new copy of Windows 10. Now I'm installing software like Thunderbird, and trying to recover Thunderbird, Firefox, etc.
Following some online crash recovery instructions, I've tried to get Thunderbird back to its old condition, but with no success. On the old SSD C: drive, which seems to be intact, I found several Profile folders ( C:\Users\myname\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\ ) with the date of the crash: q1sqod1o.default (10/18/2021 9:17 AM) and sylk055w.default-release-2 (10/18/2021 11:10 AM). Only the first contains a Mail folder with contents dated to 10/18/2021. That Mail folder contains 2 folders that might be appropriate for crash recovery: mail.comcast.net (10/17/2021 4:42 PM) and mail.comcast-2.net (10/18/2021 9:17 AM). From this information I conclude:
1) The folders dated 10/18/2021 9:17 AM are probably partly trashed due to the crash. 2) The folder dated 10/17/2021 4:42 PM probably contains valid data.
There are other folders dated to times that indicate they are inappropriate for crash recovery.
I installed Thunderbird on the new computer, copied the folder mail.comcast.net (10/17/2021 4:42 PM) to the new profile (C:...\Profiles\j32q13nq.default-release-1\Mail\), and restarted Thunderbird. None of the old mail folders appear in Thunderbird's "Folders" pane, and it again loaded 2 years' worth of old mail. In the meantime I'm using Comcast's direct login to read email.
At this point I'm at a loss as to how to fully recover all of the earlier Thunderbird info into the new Thunderbird. Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Of particular interest to me is recovering some 5,000 old emails going back more than 10 years.
All Replies (3)
Copy the mbox files from the mail.comcast.net (10/17/2021) folder into the Mail/Local Folders subfolder of the active profile, then restart TB and look under Local Folders in the Folder Pane. The mbox files are the large ones with no extension, named after folders.
That mostly worked. Thank you!!!
But I don't understand several things. The "Folders" pane lists my email address (say, myname@comcast.net), and then "Inbox" underneath. That contains about 30,000 deleted emails recently downloaded from Comcast. But under "Local Folders" another "Inbox" is listed, which contains all the emails that I wanted restored. I want to keep the latter, but delete the 30,000 emails in the 1st "Inbox".
Where should the 'main' "Inbox" show up? Under "myname@comcast.net" or under "Local Folders"? How can I fix things?
Second, I have 2 email addresses, say: myname@comcast.net and othername@comcast.net . The 1st seems to have been restored ok as described above. The 2nd does not show up at all, even though it contained emails and various subfolders. I see no folders or files in any of the "default" folders that refer to "othername@comcast.net". Is there any way to restore this 2nd inbox?
If the mbox you copied into Mail/Local Folders was named Inbox, that's the name of the folder when TB is restarted, but it can be renamed. If the myname@comcast.net account is POP, messages can be copied from Local Folders to the POP Inbox. But if it's IMAP, messages can be copied to its Inbox, but only small numbers at a time.
I can't really advise from a distance about the 2nd account.