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Lost my Local Folders after Windows reload

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 9 views
  • Last reply by david

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This is probably a mess of my own making, having been lazy about back ups. My laptop threw a critical error at me just before Christmas and I could only fix it by doing a reset and reload of Windows 10. (I think it may have been a partial HDD corruption) I selected the option to retain personal data files etc, but the reload wiped almost all my installed programs, including Thunderbird. Documents, etc folders have all survived. I re-installed the latest Thunderbird and it is working fine. However, I appear to have lost my Local Folders (as well as my address book) Not a life-or-death matter, but I would prefer to recover them, if possible. I have an "[email protected]" (TalkTalk) email account, with IMAP settings on the incoming mail and SMTPS on "sent" items. I can see all incoming emails that are still on the server, but the "sent" items folder is empty. All local folders and contents are gone. I have read up on the Thunderbird Profile and understand that it is separate from the program folder. I have used the "Help>Troubleshooting>..." feature to find that my current profile is "zqx......default-release". Using file search, it also indicates that there is another profile file, "k32....j5.default", in the same area. Both have creation dates corresponding to the reload time. I cannot find anything similar in the "Windows.old" folder that was created at the time of the reload. Is it possible that the folder contents are still in the HDD and it is just the file address that is lost? Thanks. Neil

This is probably a mess of my own making, having been lazy about back ups. My laptop threw a critical error at me just before Christmas and I could only fix it by doing a reset and reload of Windows 10. (I think it may have been a partial HDD corruption) I selected the option to retain personal data files etc, but the reload wiped almost all my installed programs, including Thunderbird. Documents, etc folders have all survived. I re-installed the latest Thunderbird and it is working fine. However, I appear to have lost my Local Folders (as well as my address book) Not a life-or-death matter, but I would prefer to recover them, if possible. I have an "[email protected]" (TalkTalk) email account, with IMAP settings on the incoming mail and SMTPS on "sent" items. I can see all incoming emails that are still on the server, but the "sent" items folder is empty. All local folders and contents are gone. I have read up on the Thunderbird Profile and understand that it is separate from the program folder. I have used the "Help>Troubleshooting>..." feature to find that my current profile is "zqx......default-release". Using file search, it also indicates that there is another profile file, "k32....j5.default", in the same area. Both have creation dates corresponding to the reload time. I cannot find anything similar in the "Windows.old" folder that was created at the time of the reload. Is it possible that the folder contents are still in the HDD and it is just the file address that is lost? Thanks. Neil

All Replies (3)

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Did you attempt to use the ...j5.default profile from the about:profiles pane? That may be what you're seeking.

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Hi. No luck. I tried to set that as my default profile, but all that happened was an attempt to load a brand new copy of Thunderbird. It made no difference to the lost folders.

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Ok, you might still, in windows file explorer, browse both profiles to see if you recognize anything of value, such as addressbook (abook.sqlite) or local folders in Mail\Local Folders folder.