Thunderbird opens but accounts are gone
I am using Thunderbird 102.6.1. I used Thunderbird this morning and everything was fine. I shut my computer and it should have gone to sleep. When I returned tonight, it appears that Windows had updated and restarted the computer. I say all of this because Thunderbird may have been forced closed and this could be a source of the problem.
In any case, when I opened Thunderbird this evening, it opened to an account set up page. Home was opened in another tab, but all my accounts, folders, address books were missing. I looked in the profiles folder and it seems my profile is intact. It's like Thunderbird knew about my profile folder and thought it was loading it, but then it didn't actually load it at all. I've tried some various things but have yet to find a solution.
Chosen solution
I finally figured it out, aided in part by the thread https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.support.thunderbird/c/73YQGxIEaIk?pli=1. It turns out that my pref.js file had gotten badly corrupted in several places, where non-text characters were showing. When Thunderbird attempted to open the profile with the corrupted pref.js, it recognized that there was something wrong with the file, renamed it invalidprefs.js, and then created a new fresh pref.js clean slate. Once I fixed invalidpref.js and then renamed it back to pref.js, I opened Thunderbird and everything was back as it should be. I just wish it had been clearer what happened so that I could have fixed it quicker.
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You didn't tell us what you tried, so suggestions may duplicate whatever you did. My suggestion is to click help>moretroubleshootinginformation, scroll down to 'profile folder' and click 'open folder' and see if you can activate the account.
I have tried importing the profile, I tried editing or deleting the profile.ini file, having Thunderbird create a new profile and renaming the old profile folder to the new profile folder's name. I tried selecting my profile from the profile selection window.
I also tried reinstalling Thunderbird.
Try help>moretroubleshootinginformation and scroll to 'profiles' and click 'about:profiles' - you had mentioned the profile was there, so it should appear here. If you select it, it should open unless it is corrupted. If so, you could still (with thunderbird not running), copy any message folders to local folders and then restart thunderbird.
Chosen Solution
I finally figured it out, aided in part by the thread https://groups.google.com/g/mozilla.support.thunderbird/c/73YQGxIEaIk?pli=1. It turns out that my pref.js file had gotten badly corrupted in several places, where non-text characters were showing. When Thunderbird attempted to open the profile with the corrupted pref.js, it recognized that there was something wrong with the file, renamed it invalidprefs.js, and then created a new fresh pref.js clean slate. Once I fixed invalidpref.js and then renamed it back to pref.js, I opened Thunderbird and everything was back as it should be. I just wish it had been clearer what happened so that I could have fixed it quicker.