Thunderbird email client disappeared from my laptop (for a second time)
I have been using Thunderbird successfully on Windows for years now, as my email client for a PlusNet email account in the UK. In May 2026 Thunderbird suddenly disappeared, as if it had been uninstalled, but I have no idea why. I managed to reinstall it and rediscovered the server details needed to reconnect to my account and fortunately had a slightly old back up (from Nov 2025) of previously saved emails. This has worked OK now for about a month.
Today the same thing has happened again - The Thunderbird icon on my desktop does not connect to anything and has just turned into a white "blank page" icon.
I may be able to get the account back by doing the same tedious process again, but I am concerned that this may keep happening and I don't know why.
This is a work laptop running Windows 11 so its possible I suppose that some sort of security software may be doing this without notifying me?? I am using Thunderbird to access a personal (ie not work) email account so maybe my work systems don't like that? As mentioned, it has worked fine for years so I dont know where the problem lies but it is worrying and annoying.
PlusNet last year transferred all email accounts to another UK provider (Greenby) but that has worked OK and I cannot see how that would affect email client software.
BJ
ప్రత్యుత్తరాలన్నీ (2)
On further investigation it is possible that this behaviour is due to automatic Thunderbird updates? It seems there is something installed called the Mozilla Maintenance system that would automatically apply updates in the background. So although my old Thunderbird icon links to nothing (should be a .exe file in a subfolder of the C:\Program Files folder), when I look up installed apps it tells me that Thunderbird is installed though I cannot find out where. So I dont know if it really is installed or not, or perhaps an update process deleted the old version but failed to install a new version due to security restrictions (I need to use an Administrator password to install new software on this work laptop).
If I have to reinstall Thunderbird, can I just connect it to my existing profile files, which I believe I have found (I have several profile folders but one of them has very recent file update dates)?
And then maybe I can disable the Mozilla Maintenance system, in case that is causing the problem?
BJ
ఎంపిక చేసిన పరిష్కారం
Since no-one has yet commented on this issue, I will just report that I seem to have fixed it by reinstalling Thunderbird from the main download page. For this I had to use the Administrator password for my laptop. I was expecting to have to do a lot of messing around with profile files, but actually once I started up Thunderbird it showed all the files I had before in my inbox and in various saved folders, and it successfully downloaded some new emails from the server. So it seemed to automatically find all the profile information even though I had downloaded a new .exe file. This seems like a happy ending (so far)!
I tried to disable the automatic background update feature which is an option in the Settings but I found that it said that my organisation had disabled all updates. Which may be what has been happening - the Mozilla Maintenance system tries to update every so often and it only succeeds in deleting the old version but not in installing a new version. But all in the background so no messages displayed to say what has happened.
I have uninstalled the Mozilla Maintenance system, which means if I want updates I have to go to the Mozilla site and download a whole newer version, but on the evidence of this experience that should not damage my inbox and other saved messages. Only time will tell if this was the cause of the problem but if it was then it will save me a lot of stress and worry in future!
న b.j.quinn77 చే మార్చబడినది
You must log in to your account to reply to posts. Please start a new question, if you do not have an account yet.