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Using same profile from Linux-Windows dual-boot doesn't work from Windows

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  • Last reply by jediguy9

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I am using Arch Linux and Windows 10 (1909) and Thunderbird 68.3.0 on both. I had Windows installed first and created the Thunderbird profile on its NTFS partition. From Arch Linux, I then symlinked from .thunderbird and .cache/thunderbird to the corresponding AppData directories on Windows.

This setup seemed to work fine from Arch Linux, but when I boot back into Windows, I sometimes get an error saying, "You have launched an older version of Thunderbird: A newer version of Thunderbird may have made changes to your profile which are no longer compatible with this older version..." This isn't helpful as I have made sure to always use the same version of Thunderbird in both OSes.

It would be very convenient if I didn't have to make the profile all over again. Do you have any suggestions for how I could debug what is actually causing this error to occur so I can fix it? Thank you.

I am using Arch Linux and Windows 10 (1909) and Thunderbird 68.3.0 on both. I had Windows installed first and created the Thunderbird profile on its NTFS partition. From Arch Linux, I then symlinked from .thunderbird and .cache/thunderbird to the corresponding AppData directories on Windows. This setup seemed to work fine from Arch Linux, but when I boot back into Windows, I sometimes get an error saying, "You have launched an older version of Thunderbird: A newer version of Thunderbird may have made changes to your profile which are no longer compatible with this older version..." This isn't helpful as I have made sure to always use the same version of Thunderbird in both OSes. It would be very convenient if I didn't have to make the profile all over again. Do you have any suggestions for how I could debug what is actually causing this error to occur so I can fix it? Thank you.

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A temporary solution was to delete the compatability.ini file within %APPDATA%/Thunderbird/<profile>.profile directory on Windows. The Arch Linux version of Thunderbird had a slightly later build date, and even though they should have the same revision, Windows didn't like that.