After a power failure, upon reboot, Thunderbird wanted me to create a new account. I have three POP3 email accounts that I access through Thunderbird, and all are missing.

This is typical after a power failure or a PC or a Thunderbird crash. The central prefs.js file in the profile gets damaged and is renamed by TB to prefs-x.js or invalidprefs.js, while TB creates a new virgin prefs.js file of a size of 6 to 7 kB which doesn't contain any account informations. This explains that TB on startup asks to set up "your existing email address". I have seen this many times in Thunderbird forums, it is a "classic" incident, but I have never seen TB create a new profil when this happens. The easiest solution would be to copy the prefs.js file from a recent profile backup and to replace the virgin prefs.js file. In very rare cases you can rename a prefs-1.js file in prefs.js and solve the problem. But most times the prefs.js file is really corrupted and cannot be repaired.

Unfortunately you have already attempted several actions to retrieve your accounts, and one of this actions seems to be the creation of a new profile (first image). These actions make it very difficult for a helper to recover your old working profile without having a sight your desktop screen.

As a first attempt without guarantee I propose to start the Thunderbird "profile manager" https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-thunderbird-profiles#w_start-the-profile-manager-when-thunderbird-is-closed then select your old profile (m87yt764) "default-release" and click on "Start Thunderbird". There might be a problem that the profile manager will display two profiles "default-release" since obviously you have created a new profile which has been given automatically the same name "default-release". If you don't know which one to select and open just take the upper one. If this doesn't bring back your old profile quit TB, launch the profile manager again and this time select the other profil.

I'm not very optimistic that these tests will retrieve your old profile since you already have fiddled around in it. Probably we will need many screen shots with the contents of those profiles and the profiles.ini file.

Mapenzi,

Thank you for your response.

What you see is what TB did. I haven't made any changes other than to select which profile is default. Prior to this issue, I have never been in the troubleshoot section. "Default-release" was the default profile when I first viewed that page. I switched it to the other with no results. I've also switched it back with no results.

So to be clear, I have not made any changes other than copying the Mail and Imapmail folders from the "release-default" into the "default" profile.

From your response, I see that "default release" was the original. I had assumed the profile on top would be the newest. I do not have any back-up from any point in my entire TB timeline.

In the file search screenshot, order is by date, latest on top. The "prefs-63" file is from 2020, and they go down from there, all the way to "prefs-1", all from 2020.

For background, I was using TB until Godaddy decided to drop email hosting and move to Outlook, which initially was web-based only, but later supported POP3. During that time TB sat dormant on my machine. 202 is likely when I finally moved from Win 7 to 10! (Yes, I hate change... I would be using my XP machine if I could!)

I'll let you take it from here as to which files I should copy to where.

So to be clear, I have not made any changes other than copying the Mail and Imapmail folders from the "release-default" into the "default" profile.

It's OK for me but I can't see those Mail and Imapmail folders in your first screenshot from 4/28/25 with the contents of the "default" profile. BTW the results of your search for prefs.js show that the prefs.js files in both Thunderbird profiles have sizes between 5 and 7 kB which confirms my diagnostic of a corrupted prefs.js file as the cause of the loss of the account parameters.

Since the Mail and Imapmail folders are still present in the default-release profile I propose to continue to work with this profile. Start TB in your default-release profile, set up a POP account for your email address "fightsb762.com" and quit TB. Go to your default-release profile folder > Mail: next to "mail.fightsb762.com" you should see a new account folder named "mail.fightsb762-1.com" (at least that's what I'm hoping for). If I'm right move the "mail.fightsb762-1.com" folder to your desktop and rename the mail.fightsb762.com in "mail.fightsb762-1.com". Restart TB and verify your new fightsb762 POP account whether it contains all your old folders and messages. If it's OK proceed the same way with your other two email addresses.