A profile is created in first run. Before you are asked to create accounts.

Perhaps you could paste your text file contents. The attachments are only for image files and JPEG and PNG are preferred there.

The text file is the middle paragraph of my post, re 'Your Thunderbird...' The problem is Thunderbird closes immediately after the message.

Please post the contents of your profiles.ini file. It's a text file and it should be located one level up to your profile folder.

There is no profile folder and no profiles.ini.

I downloaded Thunderbird, installed it and ran it. I get this msg:

Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. It may be missing or inaccessible.

Thunderbird then exits, so I can't do any troubleshooting.

I am assuming that there is exactly nothing added to Thunderbird since you installed it. This will delete it without any way to recover if there is.

Windows key + R type %appdata% and press enter. Windows file manager will open showing the app data folder, which will contain a Thunderbird folder. Delete the Thunderbird folder, then re start Thunderbird. It should just go through the motions of a new install following the removal of everything it had attempted to create until now.

If it repeats itself, it is quite probably an anti virus product or other security software preventing the changes necessary to actually complete the creation of your profile and accounts. Please post back in that instance and I will try again.

Your proposed solution worked- thanks a lot for your concise instructions. Dave