The biggest one would likely be yours, as the other is probably the empty startup profile. Everything is probably just as it was. To confirm that, set it as the active profile. Sometimes, when TB updates, it forgets where the profile is. If TB is starting and indicating it needs to have an account defined, click the home tab in upper left, then right-click in toolbar to activate menu bar. Then, click help>more troubleshooting information and on next screen select 'create profile' and from there, browse and select the larger profile and continue to TB.

The biggest one would likely be yours, as the other is probably the empty startup profile. Everything is probably just as it was. To confirm that, set it as the active profile. Sometimes, when TB updates, it forgets where the profile is. If TB is starting and indicating it needs to have an account defined, click the home tab in upper left, then right-click in toolbar to activate menu bar. Then, click help>more troubleshooting information and on next screen select 'create profile' and from there, browse and select the larger profile and continue to TB.

Thank you for the hint. I created a new profile from the troubleshooting page and directed to the old bigger profile folder as you pointed, then I restarted TB but seemed no change and still a new account setup page. Now from troubleshooting page, the bigger old profile says "is currently using this profile, so cannot be removed", the new profile says "is being used by other application, so cannot be removed". So seems i'm stucked in between... There's also a button under the new profile for "setting this as the default profile", hence i guess the new profile is not even used. I then clicked this button and restarted TB again, but still no email accounts showing up, the "setting this as the default profile" button is still under the newly created profile... So is there a way i can get out of this?

I also attached a view of most of files in the old big profile folder, do you think it looks normal? Because I cannot find any mbox files that was mentioned in [document about recovering from old profile] . So just in case.

Thanks

To help, I am attaching an image of a typical profile contents. You won't see mbox file here, as the actual mail folders and subfolders.

See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1360261

To help, I am attaching an image of a typical profile contents. You won't see mbox file here, as the actual mail folders and subfolders.

Thank you, here's screenshot of my profile folder, i think it has much less subfolders and does it look normal? I doubt the reason why I stuck in between as in my last reply was probably because I let the two profiles point to the same folder... So this time I copied the old big folder to another path, and then created a new profile in TB by pointing it to the newly copied folder, then restarted. It seems now the profile conflict was gone, and TB shows now it's using the newly created profile. But still, my email accounts didn't come back, and TB threw the new account wizard to me on start up, as in the very beginning... So it's still confusing me...

See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1360261

In my old profile folder there's only one prefs.js file, and I haven't changed default profile folder location before I came to this problem. So seems problem remains...

There are no mail folders there. You're right. There should normally be a MAIL folder and/or IMAP folder.

There are no mail folders there. You're right. There should normally be a MAIL folder and/or IMAP folder.

so where would the original profile folder (with my email accounts) probably go? It's like just 10 days since I used TB for emails and except adding my email accounts I haven't done any changes on default settings including 3rd party modules...

It may not help, but look at c:\\(yourname)\appdatroaming\thunderbird\profiles.ini If there, it should have a pointer to where the profile was. And that may help, assuming the profile can then be located. Otherwise, I have no idea.

It may not help, but look at c:\\(yourname)\appdatroaming\thunderbird\profiles.ini If there, it should have a pointer to where the profile was. And that may help, assuming the profile can then be located. Otherwise, I have no idea.

Thank you anyway. And I also hope someone could help tackle this weird problem with us.

I think you're at the point where it would be faster and more effective to create a new profile and add your accounts: Help/More Troubleshooting, about:profiles. Local mail, address books and other data can be copied from the old profiles to the new one. It may seem a daunting task at first, but the outcome should be a working setup.

I think you're at the point where it would be faster and more effective to create a new profile and add your accounts: Help/More Troubleshooting, about:profiles. Local mail, address books and other data can be copied from the old profiles to the new one. It may seem a daunting task at first, but the outcome should be a working setup.

hi sfhowes, You can take a look at the screenshot of my old profile folder in my second reply above in this thread. Does it look like it lacks some important folders? I've tried creating a new profile (with a unique name) and directing it to a copy of the old profile folder, but nothing changed in TB... Like you said, I can manually add back my accounts to a new profile, and it'll take some time to sync all the data to local as my previous email account caches cannot be used due to the kinda corrupt old profile folder... One thing I guess may be important is, I've just been using TB for less than 10 days and so far I still dont know what caused the profile suddently became corrupt. Thinking about this may reoccur without any warning and each time I had to manually sync email data, it makes me quite inconfident when I use TB for all my emails... :S

The picture of your profile folder is missing several folders, especially Mail and ImapMail, which contain the message stores, so there's no reason to create a new profile based on it.

A profile shouldn't become corrupt as long as you maintain a few practices, such as keeping the Inbox with as few messages as necessary, and excluding the profile from antivirus scanning.

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keep_it_working_(Thunderbird)

The picture of your profile folder is missing several folders, especially Mail and ImapMail, which contain the message stores, so there's no reason to create a new profile based on it. A profile shouldn't become corrupt as long as you maintain a few practices, such as keeping the Inbox with as few messages as necessary, and excluding the profile from antivirus scanning. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keep_it_working_(Thunderbird)

Thank you, I recall that I white-listed the email account cache folders but not the profile folder, from antivirus. Also few of the email accounts had accumulated over a thousand old mails mainly advertisment and notifications... so that is very likely to trigger TB's threshold is it right? I'm trying manually adding back email accounts to a newly created profile following some cleaning work. I guess I'll report if any problem occurs in this thread.