I cannot get thunderbird to run on my computer (it runs fine on my wife's computer). I keep getting the profile can't be loaded error. I have tried the fixes recommend here but none wored.

That message indicates that the profile has been tampered with or moved from another PC improperly. If you are willing to start over, click to c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming and DELETE the folder named thunderbird. Do this with thunderbird not running. Then restart thunderbird and it should create a baseline profile. If you had transferred from another computer, we can assist, probably, in getting this fixed. Tell us more.