I-Thunderbird Isithangami Sokwesekwa

My wife is an ardent and long-time Thunderbird user. She has tens of thousands of old emails organized into dozens of folders. Recently she noted that many folders contained scrambled emails. For example, an email titled "The race to re-design sugar" from Sept. 2020 now contained what looked like content from an email from Office Depot. See below for a short piece of the body of the email. Anyway, I ran Thunderbird's "repair folder" function and not only did it not unscramble the emails, it also seems to have deleted any emails prior to 6 months ago. Fortunately I've got her T-Bird profile file backed up daily, so was able to restore the original (but scrambled) emails. Any thoughts? I use outlook, but I've got pretty good PC skills if you need to take me into the weeds. Thanks!

Example of one of the scrambled emails: 'From - Sun Feb 4 12:28:28 2024 X-Account-Key: account5 X-UIDL: AEZHkUhl+QCXZb/zNgpcWOY28vQ X-Mozilla-Status: 0009 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 X-Mozilla-Keys: Received: from 127.0.0.1 by atlas-sbc-production.v2-mail-prod1-bf1.omega.yahoo.com pod-id atlas--sbc-production-bf1-7448fd4479-zt82t.bf1.yahoo.com with HTTP; Sun, 4 Feb 2024 20:27:34 +0000 Return-Path: <error@em.officedepot.com> X-Originating-Ip: [20.57.66.208] Received-SPF: pass (domain of em.officedepot.com designates 20.57.66.208 as permitted sender) Authentication-Results: atlas-sbc-production.v2-mail-prod1-bf1.omega.yahoo.com; dkim=pass header.i=@em.officedepot.com header.s=officedepot; spf=pass smtp.mailfrom=em.officedepot.com; dmarc=pass(p=NONE) header.from=em.officedepot.com; X-Apparently-To: xxxx.xxxx@att.net; Sun, 4 Feb 2024 20:27:34 +0000 X-YMailISG: T.w7qP0WLDtIndBfVsii11yVLG9YUwuh8bXrpNWGHf2Ezt9n W35tfL8ReGJq0phUGg1KeSNel41YbOoogg21rDC6q0i7xvo0jIbdikP0kWCS '

I've been reorganizing my folders, and while working on this, I will occasionally find that I can no longer create a new folder or rename an existing one, or, somewhat worse, when I rename a folder, it will disappear, along with the messages that were in it. The messages that were in the missing folder don't show up in a search, and aren't in trash.

If I close Tbird and quickfilters, and sometimes also restart the computer, the functions again work as they should (but the missing folders do not reappear). Rebuilding the parent folder doesn't recover the missing subfolder. The problem can happen when Tbird is the only open application.

Any idea what can cause this? Or where the missing emails might be?

Thanks Kent

Since starting my Win 10 Pro computer today, Thunderbird 115.4.2 (64-bit) has been "dead in the water". When it's launched, it posts the customary "Downloading Message 1 of [N]" status report, but then hangs right there, takes 3 or 4 minutes even to (re-)populate the tabs and panes that had been open, doesn't get past the alleged first new msg even in 15 or 20 minutes. When it does populate the Inbox pane, it shows no messages newer than last night just before shutdown. Very sluggish response to cursor, too: for ex. 30 seconds from clicking on a msg title in the Inbox pane to displaying that msg, even longer to bring up Help/About (with "Not Responding" shown in its title bar.)

  I get my mail through gmail's IMAP server but prefer to use Tbird's interface . Thinking there might be something evil about the first msg that was waiting to be downloaded, I used gmail's web interface to review everything new since last night, deleted several msgs that had attachments, then started Tbird again.  No change.  Can't even get Tbird into the "Work offline" state because it attempts download-of-new-msgs immediately after being started.
  The only consistently effective way I have found to STOP the hung Tbird is through (Classic) Task Manager's "Processes" list, which usually shows five or six "thunderbird.exe" instances.  After selecting whichever has the largest memory allocation I click on "End Process."
  This all "feels like" a bollixed internal state.  Does Tbird store internal-state information in its own file, or is it buried in the Registry?   If I attempt restoration from a backup, which files are needed; or is that unwise?
 I see there is a mid-April update available to 115.10; would installing it reset current messed-up internal state, or will that already messy situation prevent the update?   Is there any risk of losing my Inbox, Sent, etc contents?

Thanks!!!