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I was trying to move thunderbird to a new computer and my profiles are messed up

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  • Last reply by david

PattiWagen
PattiWagen
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I thought I followed the instructions from thunderbird, but now all I get is thunderbird can't load because the profiles are missing or wrong. I have uninstalled thunderbird, reinstalled it, and still get the same message. I deleted the profiles in local and roaming, and reinstalled, and no profiles were created. How do I get the installation program to re-create the profiles like a new install?

I thought I followed the instructions from thunderbird, but now all I get is thunderbird can't load because the profiles are missing or wrong. I have uninstalled thunderbird, reinstalled it, and still get the same message. I deleted the profiles in local and roaming, and reinstalled, and no profiles were created. How do I get the installation program to re-create the profiles like a new install?

Chosen solution

If you want a fully clean install, remove the ...appdata\roaming\thunderbird folder, not just the profile folder. And then reinstall. Do you have the old profile? Is the old computer still available? The cleanest install would be to - do fresh install of thunderbird and exit - on old computer, with Thunderbird not running, copy c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming\thunderbird to USB stick - on new computer, copy that thunderbird folder to c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming, and allow the overwrites. - start thunderbird.

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david
david
  • Top 10 Contributor
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Chosen Solution

If you want a fully clean install, remove the ...appdata\roaming\thunderbird folder, not just the profile folder. And then reinstall. Do you have the old profile? Is the old computer still available? The cleanest install would be to - do fresh install of thunderbird and exit - on old computer, with Thunderbird not running, copy c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming\thunderbird to USB stick - on new computer, copy that thunderbird folder to c:\users\<yourid>\appdata\roaming, and allow the overwrites. - start thunderbird.

PattiWagen
PattiWagen Question owner
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Thank you David. I was messing with this all night. Your instructions were far clearer than the one I got from the website. I uninstalled Thunderbird again, deleted the Thunderbird folder in roaming, copied the thunderbird directory from a usb drive, and everything came up perfectly.

david
david
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Thanks for sharing the good news.  :)

david
david
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TIP: Now that it's running properly, I encourage periodically doing a backup with same steps: - exit TB - copy the ...alppdata\roaming\thunderbird folder to external drive - if need to ever restore, copy the backup to the ...appdata\roaming folder Most problems we see are because there was no backup .