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Reinstalled TBird 68 and unable to reactivate (win10)

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Due to a System Crash at the end of October, I had to reinstall TBird 68.3 on Windows 10 (64 Bits). Since Nothing could be fixed, I upgraded TBird to V.84.0b3(64 Bits), hoping it would work better...

All my email Folders and their content reloaded themselves without any problem. However, my Contacts Folder remains empty and I have also been unable to find the correct Filters to receive any emails that have been sent to me since this Crash!

I am now desperate for help, so please don't hesitate to email me to "[email protected]" and please send a CC to my TBird email "[email protected]", just in case I find a solution in the near future!!! Thank you very, very much! Carl

Due to a System Crash at the end of October, I had to reinstall TBird 68.3 on Windows 10 (64 Bits). Since Nothing could be fixed, I upgraded TBird to V.84.0b3(64 Bits), hoping it would work better... All my email Folders and their content reloaded themselves without any problem. However, my Contacts Folder remains empty and I have also been unable to find the correct Filters to receive any emails that have been sent to me since this Crash! I am now desperate for help, so please don't hesitate to email me to "[email protected]" and please send a CC to my TBird email "[email protected]", just in case I find a solution in the near future!!! Thank you very, very much! Carl

Izmjenjeno od strane Wayne Mery

Izabrano rješenje

carl.bongaerts254 said

However, and in spite of my spending weeks with trying to make my TBird accept all messages since all the advices I have received from the Mozilla Volunteers since my System's Crash on October 24th, I have failed to resolve this issue! Obviously my failure is due to my lack of knowledge in this field and probably also because I have never faced any major issue since I started to use TBird more than 20 years ago !
I See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1317852 from the 13th December and https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1317745 from the 12th December. So I must conclude you are talking about this thread which you started on the 16th December. What you did between October and mid December, but it was not using this identity on this forum.
I am now at the point of feeling to be forced to abandon the use of TBird unless someone from Mozilla TBird is willing to give it a try "online" with my System!

You are talking to volunteers that have to comply with the arrangement that Mozilla set for this forum. Whilst Thunderbird is not a Mozilla product, we use their forum and must abide by their rules. No remote accessing of the users device is one of those conditions.

I'm very sad to have to say this but I'm not qualified enough to execute such a solution and I need help desperately!

Finally after reading three topics and basically all of this one I would guess you lost your profile in the crash and it was not picked up again when you reinstalled Thunderbird and set up your accounts again because it was a new profile. You reinstalled Thunderbird, but as the files are on your local disk, did you reinstall windows? If so how did you go about that? Is there a windows.old folder in your c: drive?

If you did not reinstall windows. Open windows file explorer and type %appdata% on the location bar and press enter. Open the Thunderbird folder followed by the profiles folder... is there more than a single profile entry in the folder?

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All Replies (20)

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I wouldn't recommend using Tbird beta as your daily driver. Use the stable version instead, available here thunderbird.net. Do you have a backup or copy of your Thunderbird profile folder that was last used by v68, that is, right after the crash, but before "upgrading" to beta v84?

Do not post your email address or any other personal information on public internet forums like this one. Also, we don't communicate solutions via direct and private emails. All help will be offered here and your correspondence is expected here as well. You should be able to access all responses and reply to them here.

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Thank you very much for your advice !

Which Version do you recommend, V.68.3 that I was using before my System's Crash, or V.78 which the automatic Download seems to be set-up for Download ?

Thank you.

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The version offered in the link I posted.

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link textHello,

I downloaded the V. 68.0b3.msi, and the Screenshot shows the nature of this failure. Should I have downloaded instead the V. 68.03b.exe ? What's the difference between the .msi and .exe please, and how do I avoid this issue please ?

Maybe I should have removed the newer V.78 and V.86 from my from my previous downloaded files ?

Izmjenjeno od strane TISSIM

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If you go to https://www.thunderbird.net and click the big green FREE DOWNLOAD button on the webpage that opens, you should get Thunderbird 78.6.0. That is the latest stable release as at now, so I don't know how you're ending up with 68.0b3 msi and exe files. Please use the link I've posted twice now. That's the official download site for stable Thunderbird releases. You can delete all previously downloaded files if they're confusing you.

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Sorry about that, but another person had suggested that I reinstall V.68 because it was the same Version when my computer crashed, thus my being a bit confused.

I will install V.78 Now

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Okay, Tbird installed V.78.6 successfully, but in 32 Bits only, probably because the 64 Bits is not yet available.

Is there a special Key I should click to prevent my Tbird from updating itself to a Beta Version ?

All emails and their Folders reinstalled automatically during TBird's installation, which was wonderful because it saved me the extra hour or two to do it myself manually !

However, my "inbox" did not receive any of the emails that were sent to me after my Computer's Crash on Oct. 30th'2020, so I'll have to try fix it manually, unless you have another solution...

My Address Book will also have to be reloaded manually by myself.

Thank you very much for your highly valuable help !

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78 is a release version. Release has it's own channel, and beta is it's own channel, so 78 will not update to beta.

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The 64-bit version is available. Underneath the green download button there is a link that says "systems & languages". Open it and it will take you to https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/thunderbird/all/ where you will find more download options like the 64-bit version. To fix problems receiving and sending mails in v78, see Thunderbird 78 FAQ

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Okay, Tbird installed V.78.6 successfully, but in 32 Bits only, probably because the 64 Bits is not yet available.

Is there a special Key I should click to prevent my Tbird from updating itself to a Beta Version ?

All emails and their Folders reinstalled automatically during TBird's installation, which was wonderful because it saved me the extra hour or two to do it myself manually !

However, my "inbox" did not receive any of the emails that were sent to me after my Computer's Crash on Oct. 30th'2020, so I'll have to try fix it manually, unless you have another solution...

My Address Book will also have to be reloaded manually by myself.

Thank you very much for your highly valuable help !

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One last question before I download and install the 64 Bit... What is the difference between the .exe and MSI, and which one would be preferable for Windows 10 ?

Thank you

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Use the .exe package. MSI is used for central deployment in an enterprise environment.

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Thank you for this important information about using .exe instead of msi

Each time I clicked on TBird V.78 (64 Bits) (English Canada), the Windows Apps & Features opened and the only option it gave me was to Uninstall TBird. Might you have any suggestion to make my System ignore Microsoft please ? Thank you.

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TB = Thunderbird.

user may also need to Disable AV/FW/SS software, OR enable+add+allow EXCEPTIONS in it. some AV/SS creates insecure proxy/gateway for scanning/checking emails, but there are other secure way to scan/check emails.

if that does not solve, then see below.

please, you MUST first make backup/copy of ALL folders+files under this location, copy into Desktop: "%APPDATA%\Thunderbird\Profiles\" thats usually located here: "C:\Users\<YourWindowsUserName>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\"

that ...Profiles\ folder contains multiple sub-folders , those are various TB profile folders , a TB profile folder looks like this : "xxxxxxxx.profile-name"


during downgrading to v68 series, you needed to use older v68 series TB-profile folder , with older v68 series TB , and you also needed to convert the BACKUP bak files of Address-Book into their corresponding file: you needed to get rid of bak file-extension, this way: rename *.ext.bak files into *.ext files. so that means, rename *.mab.bak files into *.mab files.

mab files are Address-Book files.

after above, you have to run TB v68 series with this option --allow-downgrade in the commandline, then downgrade would have worked fine . DETAILS are inside linked pages.


from your last post & other's earlier posts , i understand you have been instructed to upgrade & use latest TB series.

in that case you may need to get back your *.mab.bak files from older TB-profile & rename to *.mab files , and run Converter tools to convert mork formatted mab files into csv,etc other format files , link is at the bottom side of this post , then you can import that into latest TB series.


Disabled auto-update of TB : inside the linked page , click on the topside 1st link to goto the auto-update disable instruction page into another website. • Regain old data(in Windows, by using: downgrade process, or second-TB, or manual file-transfer,etc). • Downgrade TB in macOS: downgrade by using second-TB, upgrade TB. • ATT-Yahoo related settings for TB. • Yahoo related settings for TB. • Microsoft related settings for TB. • Convert mab based Address-Book into other format.

Izmjenjeno od strane atErik

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Please forgive me but I'm going to do a bit of scolding - you're making quite a mess of things IMO with all kinds of detours. And atErik's posting is frankly going to make things even more complicated.

Do you really want to resolve your initial problem? (which, by now, is almost impossible to know)

A. forget about beta B. forget about 64bit C. forget about msi

Just run the .exe - whatever one you download, it doesn't matter as long as it is from https://www.thunderbird.net/.

Now, what single problem are you trying to solve? Is it still "Contacts Folder remains empty and I have also been unable to find the correct Filters to receive any emails"?

Lastly, it will help to understand your configuration - do help > troubleshooting > copy text to clipboard. And now paste that information into a reply to this topic.

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carl.bongaerts254 said

Each time I clicked on TBird V.78 (64 Bits) (English Canada), the Windows Apps & Features opened and the only option it gave me was to Uninstall TBird. Might you have any suggestion to make my System ignore Microsoft please ?

You need to first uninstall the existing 32-bit installation, reboot (if prompted) then install the 64-bit version.

Edit. I agree with Wayne. Stick to the stable 32-bit version that you currently have installed and running just fine, so that we can look at exactly what problems you're having.

Izmjenjeno od strane Stans

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p.s. if version 78 is starting, then you shouldn't be installing anything, and we should be focusing on the source of the mail difficulty. Troubleshooting data should help with that.

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This good news appeared automatically about a week ago when Mozilla detected that my TBird 78 (32 Bits) should be upgraded to my System's 64 Bits, so I clicked on accept and the upgrade was confirmed a few seconds later. No more worries about this any more...

However, and in spite of my spending weeks with trying to make my TBird accept all messages since all the advices I have received from the Mozilla Volunteers since my System's Crash on October 24th, I have failed to resolve this issue! Obviously my failure is due to my lack of knowledge in this field and probably also because I have never faced any major issue since I started to use TBird more than 20 years ago !

I am now at the point of feeling to be forced to abandon the use of TBird unless someone from Mozilla TBird is willing to give it a try "online" with my System! I'm very sad to have to say this but I'm not qualified enough to execute such a solution and I need help desperately!

Thank you for your help!

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carl.bongaerts254 said

One last question before I download and install the 64 Bit... What is the difference between the .exe and MSI, and which one would be preferable for Windows 10 ? Thank you

When I tried it (The MSI) is missed out all the options dialogs and performed a somewhat broken default install. SO I will suggest the EXE every time.

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Odabrano rješenje

carl.bongaerts254 said

However, and in spite of my spending weeks with trying to make my TBird accept all messages since all the advices I have received from the Mozilla Volunteers since my System's Crash on October 24th, I have failed to resolve this issue! Obviously my failure is due to my lack of knowledge in this field and probably also because I have never faced any major issue since I started to use TBird more than 20 years ago !
I See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1317852 from the 13th December and https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1317745 from the 12th December. So I must conclude you are talking about this thread which you started on the 16th December. What you did between October and mid December, but it was not using this identity on this forum.
I am now at the point of feeling to be forced to abandon the use of TBird unless someone from Mozilla TBird is willing to give it a try "online" with my System!

You are talking to volunteers that have to comply with the arrangement that Mozilla set for this forum. Whilst Thunderbird is not a Mozilla product, we use their forum and must abide by their rules. No remote accessing of the users device is one of those conditions.

I'm very sad to have to say this but I'm not qualified enough to execute such a solution and I need help desperately!

Finally after reading three topics and basically all of this one I would guess you lost your profile in the crash and it was not picked up again when you reinstalled Thunderbird and set up your accounts again because it was a new profile. You reinstalled Thunderbird, but as the files are on your local disk, did you reinstall windows? If so how did you go about that? Is there a windows.old folder in your c: drive?

If you did not reinstall windows. Open windows file explorer and type %appdata% on the location bar and press enter. Open the Thunderbird folder followed by the profiles folder... is there more than a single profile entry in the folder?

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