Downgrade from Beta [was Upgrade to 68.2.2] is Unmitigated Disaster (Win10)
How is it, in this modern world of technology and application savviness, that an upgrade such as this, even with a new profile manager, somehow wipes out EVERYTHING from the previous install? I had eight accounts and a six year history of address book. All gone. I need to start over. How is it that this upgrade was allowed to be released into the wild?
I also tried the command line -P method with no different results. And... really? to fix the problem you created, you're asking the unwashed masses to drop to DOS and run a command line hack? Who thought this was a good idea?
It also did not install in a new directory, as the documentation implied... my old copy of TB is gone.
I came in on a holiday to get some work done. Now I'm starting off my day setting up my email again.
Modificato da Wayne Mery il
Tutte le risposte (11)
Hi Mik. Sorry you are having difficulty, but with several million people using version 68 clearly what you are experiencing is out of the norm.
Let's gather some details:
- I don't understand what you mean by new profile manager. The startup profile manager hasn't changed. So are you refering to about:profiles found at Help > Troubleshooting?
- From what version did you initially update, and what process (website download, help menu, update prompt)?
- 32bit Thunderbird?
- I don't understand "It also did not install in a new directory, as the documentation implied... my old copy of TB is gone." What is the URL to this documentation?
Hopefully we can help you get this cleared up.
Ah, one more thing. Please visit %appdata%\thunderbird\profiles using Windows Explorer (or just paste it into Windows start menu search field). What profile directory names to do you see?
Lastly, (assuming your profile is gone) are you not able to restore from a backup?
- I searched in help and found this text:
"Beginning with Thunderbird version 68, Thunderbird by default will use a dedicated profile for each installation of Thunderbird (including beta and Nightly installations). This will make Thunderbird more stable when switching between installations on the same computer and will also allow you to run different Thunderbird installations at the same time.
"You will not lose any personal data or customizations. Any previous profile data is saved and associated with the first Thunderbird installation that was opened after this change."
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/unable-launch-older-version-profile
- Don't recall the previous version. Found this in the headers of a recently sent message:
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:71.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/71.0
I just went to Troubleshooting Information / Application Basics and found...
User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; WOW64; rv:68.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/68.2.2
... so now I'm confused. How is this latest upgrade 68.2.2 when what I had before was 71.0?
Clicking on Update History I see that (and it would be nice if we could copy/paste from this pop-up)...
Thunderbird 71.0 Beta 2 (20191030211447) attempted to install on 11/11, 11/10, 11/9 and 11/1, Status: The Update could not be installed (patch apply failed).
Before that:
- 71.0 Beta 1 installed on 10/29
- 70.0 Beta 4 on 10/18
- 70.0 Beta 3 on 10/5
- 70.0 Beta 2 on 9/25
- 70.0 Beta 1 on 9/12
- 69.0 Beta 4 on 8/29
- 32bit
- See first bullet, above. Perhaps I misread the text.
> Ah, one more thing.
- i1kumc1k.default-release-1
- s85uxabn.default
- sg4r42lm.default-release
All have today's date. The second folder has older file dates. The first and third have all-today dates.
I followed your question about "about:profiles found at Help > Troubleshooting" and found the About Profiles page. I tried clicking on the "Set as Default Profile" for the "default" profile (the middle one, above) and when I clicked on Launch profile in new browser, got the message:
"You have launched an older version of Thunderbird "A newer version of Thunderbird may have made changes to your profile which are no longer compatible with this older version. Use this profile only with that newer version, or create a new profile for this installation of Thunderbird. Creating a new profile requires setting up your accounts, calendars and add-ons again."
My only choices are to Exit, or to Create New Profile.
Ugh, filters are all gone, too.
I'm very glad you have responded. Not sure yet how you got in this situation, but he're how to get out of it.
1. immediately backup the entire profile directory %appdata%\thunderbird - see https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-thunderbird-stores-user-data#w_backing-up-a-profile
2. "You have launched an older version of Thunderbird" implies you need start using
thunderbird.exe -P --allow-downgrade
Now you can pick your original default profile, the one with out "-something" in the name.
Please post your results
Ok, better. All email accounts are present, and all filters are back. Whew! Thanks!
However, the Address Book is empty. Anyway to import that?
I would like to delete the other profiles, too, to avoid confusion in the future.
Thanks
Yes, you can remove the other profiles using about:profiles.
And by your second last posting it is now clear that this happened because you "downgraded" from Beta. Not a good experience I agree, and it is new with version 68.
Downgrading versions, in this case from 71 to 68, the system will recognize this and prevsent the user from "automatically" using the profile that was previously used with a newer version - to avoid potential data issues related to preferences and other data structures. As a result, it automatically creates and uses a new profile - a profile which is empty, and quite a shock to the user.
Modificato da Wayne Mery il
> a profile which is empty, and quite a shock to the user.
Indeed. Going forward there should be better notice about this during the "upgrade", and a path to copying/converting the "newer" profile to this older non-beta version. Especially since I was reminded about the upgrade for a while.
Any advice on retrieving my address book?
> Any advice on retrieving my address book?
Sorry, I don't have experience here - you can probably find something by googling, and if that fails please file a new support topic with the title which describes this issue. The ability to recover depends on a) whether the .mab files exist in your profile, and b) failing that, whether you have backup files?
> I was reminded about the upgrade for a while.
So you got into this situation because the beta was telling you there was a beta upgrade, but it wouldn't do it, so you ended up downloading the non-beta version from the website?
Why can't the address book import from or load address books from other profiles? Or is that data kept in another location, which may have been overwritten in the upgrade process?
Actually, I found the abook.mab.bak file in the default profile. Just swapped it with the empty abook.mab and it appears most of the address book is back. There's only two addresses in the "Collected" book, which should be the bigger of the two, but at least I'm not starting from scratch.
There's also an abook.sqlite file in there, which I suppose holds the actual book, and the other file is the index?
> So you got into this situation because the beta was telling you there was a beta upgrade, but it wouldn't do it, so you ended up downloading the non-beta version from the website?
Essentially, yes. I was directed to the website. it did not indicate this was a downgrade.
> Actually, I found the abook.mab.bak file in the default profile. Just swapped it with the empty abook.mab
Ah yes, a further complication. Version 71 migrated from the old addressbook format to an slqlite database, and renamed the original file to .bak as part of that process. And that's why regressing to the earlier version 68 didn't list your addressbook. Glad you found it.