Thunderbird 115.18.0 (64-bit update) lost all my folders and screwed up my email accounts!! I've been having a ghastly time for weeks and just feel like junking it...HELP

No one on this forum has probably used V115 for more than 2 years. Most moved on when V128 was released in July 2024 and most folk involved with support would have updated as they were answering questions about the new version and had a need to be familiar with it. Your choice to remain with Windows 7 means that your are using a version of the software that is well out of date and not being maintained it also lacks modern encryption protocols that are being enforced by some mail providers. That is the reality. No one forces you to move on from Windows 7, but there are drawbacks to that choice. Those drawback are greater for those with less technical skills because they get ever further from the norm that others use and support. I say this because I simply do not want your expectations of success to be to high. I will try, but not at the expense of trashing my own Thunderbird to install your version so I can see the screens as they were years ago. You ask about changing an existing account from IMAP to POP and ask why that can not be done. My response is that it simply can not be for technical reasons. It is also irrelevant to your issue, unless you made some serious hacking attempts and corrupted things in the process. Your say "the update 5.18.0 (64-bit and reporting as supposedly up to date) ) has completely lost all my folders and screwed up my email accounts" that update, (I assume you mean 115.18.0esr), has been out there since December 2024 are you saying you have been having this issue for almost 2 years? Nope you say "I've been having an absolutely ghastly time for weeks" so this is not a two year old issue. As you can see I am actually struggling to even understand the issue. You say "My email accounts that have been working successfully without problem for many years now sometimes send and not receive or the other way round, not send but receive." so you appear to be blaming the email client for periodically giving you some sort of errors, but you neglect to share them so a third party like muself might have a clue what the issues are. My guess, based on your operating system and a absolute lack of any diagnostic information at all is your antivirus may well be the root cause of the issues, but given the age of your operating system is is possible t6hat is does not have the necessary encryption systems to undertake modern encrypted communications. Windows 7 lacks native Support for TLS 1.3: Windows 7 natively supports up to TLS 1.2, but TLS 1.3 is not implemented in the operating system's default network stack. TLS 1.2 (Out-of-the-Box): While Windows 7 can support TLS 1.2, it is disabled by default on fresh installations and requires specific registry and hotfix updates (such as KB3140245) to function. Both of those are required standards for some mail providers, You do not mention who provides your mail service. But the big players like Google Outlook and Yahoo require TLS version 1.2 at least. The fact that the issue is intermittent does indicate that the problem is not Thunderbird or the operating system or even the network layer, * Third party software in the mix like antivirus is a common cause of intermitent failure. * Bad servers with the provider can also see issue occuring when you connect to a bad apple in a server cluster. Hence an intermittent failure as you never know when p[hysical hardware you connect to in a cluster. I thing Spectrum are having one of those sort of issues, based on some of the recent posts here. * are the usual causes of intermitent failure * Failing (not yet failed) hardware can also cause intermittent issues Perhaps you could take the time to explain exactly what happened and what you have changed as even after looking at the send and receive issues, that is in no way related to mail that you can not access which appear to be yet another unrelated problem. For us to get a better handle in this, we will need some more information. Could you please do the following? # Open the menu '''[[Image:Fx57Menu]] > Help > Troubleshooting Information''', then click '''Copy text to Clipboard'''. # Open a reply to this post, and paste the copied information into the reply. # Please also provide results for the following test on your system #* Does Thunderbird work as expected in [[Troubleshoot Mode Thunderbird|Thunderbird troubleshooting mode]]? #* Does Thunderbird work as expected with your OS started in '''[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safe_mode safe mode with Networking]'''. Instructions for each operating system: [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/start-your-pc-in-safe-mode-in-windows-92c27cff-db89-8644-1ce4-b3e5e56fe234 Windows 10/11], [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/windows-startup-settings-including-safe-mode-7f31dcea-6427-0ba0-ec1b-729a56321cd3 Windows 8], [https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/advanced-startup-options-including-safe-mode-b90e7808-80b5-a291-d4b8-1a1af602b617#start-computer-safe-mode=windows-7 Windows 7], [http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1564 OSX]

Hi Matt - thank you very much for coming back to me so quickly with your advice. You have confirmed what I suspected that there are numerous things that could be in play here. I appeciate that I am hanging on in there with W7 on my main (what was highly specd) computer but there are practical reasons for this and I have always been extremely careful with internet use. As a first step I am going to have the computer torn down to reduce the liklihood of any potential hardware problem then go through all of your suggestions/requests and come back to you. Once again, thank you for your prompt clearly expert help. Kind regards, Richard