Forum Discussion

Healeyman's avatar
Healeyman
Explorer
May 21, 2019

Mozilla Thunderbird & Win 10

While out RVing over the weekend (Saturday at 11:03 AM CDT) HP laptop Win 10 did an update while I was away from the rig.

Whatever the "upgrade" was it TOTALLY FUBARed my Thunderbird Portable Email client.

I cannot tell if the Win 10 upgrade just broke all of the links or if it also scrambled the settings and/or deleted a bunch of files.

I find Tbird folders and files on the HD, but none of the apps or .exe will execute.

Between my wife and me, we had every Email (+ attachments) sent or received since 2012. Now we cannot access over 50K historical Emails nor ~300 contacts addresses. We also cannot send nor receive Email.

Anybody out there know anything about Thunderbird?

Tim
  • Healeyman's avatar
    Healeyman
    Explorer
    May 23, 2019
    Mozilla Thunderbird & Win 10 - UPDATE

    I want to thank all of you for your comments and suggestions.

    I downloaded the new version of Thunderbird Portable and set up a client for me and for my wife. Thunderbird Portable is a stand alone Email Client and does not intermesh with Windows. It can also be resident on and run from an external hard or thumb drive for use anywhere.

    I have been able to recall all Emails (100 for me, 248 for my wife) since last April 12, the storage cutoff date on the Verizon Email server.

    I am now working to link up the new Thunderbird with our old contact list and our sent and received data files.

    Thanks again. I'm gaining on it.

    Tim
  • bighatnohorse's avatar
    bighatnohorse
    Explorer II
    May 23, 2019
    Campfire Time wrote:

    That assumes he's using IMAP and not a POP3 server. Oddly enough there's still a lot of POP3 out there.

    The web has a bit of mis-information regarding IMAP vs POP3.
    IMAP stores messages on the server forever (afaik) and so does POP3 - the difference is that POP3 allows the user choices to store messages forever, or for a set period of time, and allows the user to download from different machines. I set Thunderbird to delete messages left on the server that are 90 days old (the downloaded messages remain on my computer). I prefer that compared to IMAP.
  • Campfire_Time's avatar
    Campfire_Time
    Explorer
    May 22, 2019
    Backups? Evidently not.

    Here's a little light reading. Thunderbird Profiles. Make a copy of your profile. Uninstall Thunderbird, then reinstall. Then copy your profile over to the new install. If the profile didn't get whacked then you should get your email back. And then you can regularly make a copy of this in the evet your hard drive should die, or your computer melts, or what ever.

    ksg5000 wrote:
    I have windows 10 with Thunderbird and the new update did not have adverse effect on me. Since your original emails should still reside on the original servers you might consider just reinstalling Thunderbird - might be a simple fix.


    That assumes he's using IMAP and not a POP3 server. Oddly enough there's still a lot of POP3 out there.
  • ksg5000's avatar
    ksg5000
    Explorer
    May 22, 2019
    I have windows 10 with Thunderbird and the new update did not have adverse effect on me. Since your original emails should still reside on the original servers you might consider just reinstalling Thunderbird - might be a simple fix.
  • Janss's avatar
    Janss
    Explorer II
    May 22, 2019
    I would start by trying to open Thunderbird in safe mode and see if it works. If not, then try starting Windows in safe mode and see if Thunderbird works. Search internet for how to do safe mode.
    You can delete and reinstall the Thunderbird app without losing your emails. Search internet for how to do it. That's what I did with a different Thunderbird problem. But now I can't remember how I did it.
  • sch911's avatar
    sch911
    Explorer
    May 21, 2019
    Who is the email provider? If hotmail, gmail or several others you emails are most likely still there in the cloud.

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