
HELP! I changed drive letter - now all settings and emails are gone
So I was forced to migrate from Eudora to Thunderbird and lost half my emails in the process (10 years worth). It's all corrupted when I open them. Okay, learned to live with it.
Then recently I had to change drive number on some of my hard disks. When I rebooted Thunderbird was empty as if I just had installed it.
I know one way to solve it is to go through the pain of re-configuring everything from scratch and locate the old mail folders, and tweak the program as I want it, etc.
But... is it not possible to edit the registry by only changing the drive letter so that it becomes exactly like before?
OR:
Without messing with the registry, is there somewhere I can change the location of where it reads the data to know the configurations, mail setting, mail folders, etc, so that it becomes like before?
I use Windows 7 by the way (yes I know, but I'm tweaking and maintaining it with stuff like Optach, it works like a charm).
I'm getting desperate as there's important emails pending, so I defer to the online oracle!
All Replies (6)
Have you tried changing location on the server settings pane? I have used that approach when moving an account to another drive, but don't know its usefulness going the other way. And, should you ever need to convert more Eudora files, there were early thunderbird releases that did that, but the feature was eventually dropped.
Thank you, that solved part of my problem. I have restored the mail folders to my email accounts, plus the local folders.
But it's just a band aid. The program looks horrible, i recall i spent hours configuring it, and now its back to scratch. Also, the installed plugins are gone.
I'm assuming all this can be restored by altering a registry reference or if there's some way to restore the folder paths rather than importing stuff and starting from scratch.
alvin6 said
So I was forced to migrate from Eudora to Thunderbird and lost half my emails in the process (10 years worth). It's all corrupted when I open them. Okay, learned to live with it.
Unfortunately Eudora was quite content with a garbage store. It was robust in it;s error handling of corrupt emails and generally just "coped". Makes it hard to import them though as the old computer adage of garbage in garbage out still applied.
This article, which is nearly as venerable as Eudora offers pointers for importing Eudora to Thunderbird. The Eudora rescue utility was invaluable in fixing the mess Eudora was able to function in for many so their data could be imported. Personally I also think using Thunderbird V3 to import Eudora is perhaps the cleanest way to import to Thunderbird as that is the build that Eudora OSE was using with it's Penelope addon to claim to be Eudora OSE. So anyone moving to OSE needed to use that import to get their Eudora into Thunderbird.
Then recently I had to change drive number on some of my hard disks. When I rebooted Thunderbird was empty as if I just had installed it.
I would suggest simply reverting the drive change until you got your Thunderbird house in order. But that is obviously not a choice.
I know one way to solve it is to go through the pain of re-configuring everything from scratch and locate the old mail folders, and tweak the program as I want it, etc.
Or you could manually edit the profiles.ini file to show the new drive letter to the profile folder. That is fairly straightforward change of a single character, but I would guess from subsequent reading you have changed the local directories on some of your account and I can not help you undo that. You just have to reverse what you have done.
The profile.ini file is stored in the hidden appdata roaming folder on windows. Open the file manager/explorer and type %appdata%\Thunderbird into the address/location bar and press enter once you have removed what was already there. Open the profiles.ini file in a text editor (notepad will do, but not a word processor) Make the relevant drive letter change, save the file and exit. All done.
But... is it not possible to edit the registry by only changing the drive letter so that it becomes exactly like before?
Of course it is possible, but not by messing in the registry. Thunderbird is a multi platform application and neither Linux nor Apple have a registry. So Thunderbird does not use it except to integrate operating system functions like default mail client.
Without messing with the registry, is there somewhere I can change the location of where it reads the data to know the configurations, mail setting, mail folders, etc, so that it becomes like before?
See my earlier comments about using notepad.
I use Windows 7 by the way (yes I know, but I'm tweaking and maintaining it with stuff like Optach, it works like a charm).
Windows 3.1 is much faster and boots in mere seconds. My son installed in on DOS 6 just recently and it was fun to play with. It functions as it always did and can now crash faster than ever. It also still asks if it is OK that it crashed and lost all my data that I can still see on the screen. It is also a security nightmare that is fundamentally broken when it comes to encrypted connections because the world has moved on. I learned to love windows 7 in the day. But it's day is gone. I upgraded to Widnows 11 not because I wanted to, but Microsoft is not putting any effort of to older versions. This (version 115 ESR) is also the last major version of any Mozilla platform based products that will run on Windows 7. So either find a new email client that supports your chosen platform going forward, or start planning an upgrade.
I'm getting desperate as there's important emails pending, so I defer to the online oracle!
Note that the profiles ini file is a standard windows layout INI file with a separate block for each profile the prfile manager knows about. An example from mine is below. You should only need to edit the actual drive letter, but by now the path might be anywhere and more importantly the IsRelative mus be set to 0 (Zero). This indicates of the path given in the Path line is relative to the location of the profiles.ini file and in programming 0 is False
[Profile12] Name=Hasbro IsRelative=0 Path=D:\TBIRD\Profiles\k6iwodna.default
Fundamentally if you are using USB drives to store your profile use the portable version of Thunderbird from portable apps because the actual drive letters issued by Windows are really a lottery. I do not recommend using Thunderbird on removable media at all. But in the end it is your choice.
Modified
Okay, you seem to know what you're talking about, so this gives me hope. Unfortunately I see no paths in the info pointing to my mailfolders and such. Is it possible that now it has overwritten the old settings since I opened the program and imported folders?
Here's what the ini file says:
[Install4B9DC581EAB3AC15] Default=Profiles/updwq5r9.default-release Locked=1
[Profile2] Name=default-release-1 IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/wy59pq4e.default-release-1
[Profile1] Name=default-release IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/updwq5r9.default-release
[Install20283B8C96680435] Default=Profiles/wy59pq4e.default-release-1 Locked=1
[Profile0] Name=default IsRelative=1 Path=Profiles/ne5h24zb.default Default=1
[General] StartWithLastProfile=1 Version=2
Update: Yesterday the new profile worked fine. I imported new mailfolders etc, but it looked like crap and the settings were gone etc, but at least I had access.
Today I tried open the program again, and was informed it couldn't open because it is blocked by a group policy? wth?
I have done no tampering with profile ini or anything else. I did reboot the computer once since I imported the mail folders, but that's it.
Say what you will about old eudora, but in my experience it was simpler to restore and emails were never lost (could be saved outside the program). When I tried importing the emails into Thunderbird is when they got corrupted and now i have huge files that I think are beyond salvage.
For example, when i open some of these mails it shows gibberish and then some fragments of the real info - or is can show an email (or several emails in the same email), and/or this email is repeated endlessly through many emails (with other people) - it's simply a mess.
If and when I have my thunderbird restored, I will try and see if this link you sent can do anything more, but I suspect it's too late. I fear the original info has been overwritten by thunderbird so now it's rubbish.
Ok, I managed to restore access to it. So at least I'm back to scratch. If you have any suggestions where to correct the path, do let me know.