Mozilla and Thunderbird claim that the profile cannot be found! Why is a "clean" reinstall not possible?.
Situation(s)
1. Mozilla and Thunderbird claim that the profile(s) cannot be found. thus neither browser nor e-mail account can be opened. 2. Tried unloading both programs and fresh load of newer versions - still reported Profile cannot be found or not accessible. 3. Unloaded again, and regedit searched for any hidden bits in registry. 4. Loaded Google chrome after being out of contact for a day .- need a browser and alternate e-mail. 5. Have subsequently tried loading both Mozilla Browser and Thunderbird - profiles remain inaccessible, under-cover, in hiding or playing hard to get! Now hear that Mozilla browser is under redundancy stress - hardly surprised. 6. Still have around 30 mails locked in an account set-up to be accessed by Thunderbird - not counting junk maiks since!
All Replies (2)
First, have you shut down and restarted Windows 8.1 since this problem started? That can resolve issues with confusion over which Windows user folders you have permissions for, and terminate file locks that can cause that issue.
Second, let's make sure your profile folders are still present. Set Windows to show hidden files and folders: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/help/14201/windows-show-hidden-files
Then type or paste this shortcut into the Windows Run dialog or the system search box (on the "charms bar"?) and press Enter to load the directory:
%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles
Do you have any profile folders there?
If you do, check inside to see whether the files were modified around the last time Firefox was working normally. If so, leave that window open and use this shortcut to launch a second window:
%APPDATA%\Mozilla\Firefox\
Here, you should find a file name profiles.ini -- if Windows won't show the .ini extension, I suggest turning off hiding of file extensions. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/tutorials/how-to-show-file-extensions-in-windows/
If you open profiles.ini in a text editor such as Windows' Notepad program, it's likely that the profile path will not match the one you have open in the other window. You can try editing it to match (just the last part, don't remove the "Path=Profiles/" part).
After saving that change, when you start Firefox, it should use that profile.
I'm not as familiar with Thunderbird as with Firefox, but you can take the first step of looking for your data using this shortcut:
%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles\
Pborn4 said
Now hear that Mozilla browser is under redundancy stress - hardly surprised.
Sorry, but what does that mean?