Toad-Hall said

Please provide info for each query. Make hidden files and folders visible:

• http://kb.mozillazine.org/Show_hidden_files_and_folders

In Thunderbird

• Help > Troubleshooting Information
• click on 'Show Folder' button

a new window opens showing contents of your current profile folder name. It should look similar to first image below. Q1: Confirm have you been able to do this? If no...please state exactly what happened - was Help > Troubleshooting Information available ? Then manually access via this location: The profile location will be: C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\ If yes, you can see contents of profile folder name.... Now close thunderbird...

• Q2: Can you exit / close Thunderbird by either using the top right X in window or via File > Exit ?
• If yes, exit Thunderbird now - this is important.

• Right click on task bar and select 'Task Manager':
• Q3:How many versions of thunderbird.exe are running?
• If any are running then select thunderbird.exe and 'End Process', so no thunderbird.exe is shown.

In the window showing profile folder name contents....

• scroll down, look for: parent.lock file.
• If this file is not there, that is ok.
• If it is there, then delete it.
• Q4 Confirm...Did you need to delete the parent.lock file?

then delete the following files - they will be recreated.:

• panacea.dat
• session.json
• xulstore.json

A profile folder name is typically 'xxxxxxxx.default' where the x's are letters and numbers. C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\

• Go up directory - Click on 'Profiles' folder

see second image as additional help, but you should see it at the top.

• Q5Please post image showing contents - it will list any profile folder names.

C:\Users\<Windows user name>\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\<Profile name>\

• Go up directory - Click on 'Thunderbird'
• Q6 Do you see 'profiles.ini' file?

See third image below.

• If yes, please open 'profiles.ini' using 'Notepad'
• Q7Post image showing contents of this file.

Finally, when you have done all of the above... Restart Thunderbird in SAfe Mode

• Hold down shift whilst starting Thunderbird.

Report back providing information as requested. Check to see if toolbars seem ok etc. Is the email list refreshing correctly?

I'll work on this more tomorrow but to answer Q1, the profile folder name wasn't accessible via the Help menu because that is not currently in the Thunderbird program I have on my PC.

A confusing part of your query is that it doesn't follow logical progression, exactly. "If yes, you can see contents of profile folder" ... then goes to Q2, but describes how to open it manually beforehand.

I'm seeing a lock file there, I'll try deleting that first. But that will be for later, as I have a long day ahead of me, I'll finish this when I have more time. Thanks anyway for your response.

Everything is in perfect logical order, but you need to remember there is a difference between Thunderbird Profile folder and Thunderbird program.

Q1 basically says access your profile folder. If you cannot do it via the Help menu because it is currently being silly, then do it manually, but tell me if this is not in the Help menu. You say Help does not have 'TRoubleshooting Information' at the moment. So you accessed profile manually. That is good so far.

Now you see the contents of the Profile folder name in a new explorer window.

Q2 This tells you to close/exit Thunderbird program. This has nothing to do with the Profile folder you have just accessed, but you must close Thunderbird program if it is running. I asked if this was available by top right X or by the File >Exit menu. I need to know what you did to exit Thunderbird as you are saying some menu items are not available. So can you exit thunderbird and tell me whether the options to exit appear to work.

Q3 tells you to check that Thunderbird program really has been shut down via Task Manager. on 'Applications' tab has the Thunderbird program stopped running. On 'Processes' tab has 'thunderbird.exe' stopped ? If yes, great, if no then select Thunderbird and click on 'End Process. Confirm what you found and what you did.

Q4. Once Thunderbird has been fully exited, then in the Profile folder, look for and Delete the parent.lock file if it is still existing. The parent.lock file will always be there if thunderbird is running. But if a glitch has occurred, then it may well still be there even after you have followed instructions to exit Thunderbird and check in Task Manager. If you do not exit Thunderbird then anything you do in the Profile folder will have no effect. then delete the other files as stated. Confirm you have deleted all the mentioned files.

Then progress to next request.

Toad-Hall said

Everything is in perfect logical order, but you need to remember there is a difference between Thunderbird Profile folder and Thunderbird program. Q1 basically says access your profile folder. If you cannot do it via the Help menu because it is currently being silly, then do it manually, but tell me if this is not in the Help menu. You say Help does not have 'TRoubleshooting Information' at the moment. So you accessed profile manually. That is good so far. Now you see the contents of the Profile folder name in a new explorer window. Q2 This tells you to close/exit Thunderbird program. This has nothing to do with the Profile folder you have just accessed, but you must close Thunderbird program if it is running. I asked if this was available by top right X or by the File >Exit menu. I need to know what you did to exit Thunderbird as you are saying some menu items are not available. So can you exit thunderbird and tell me whether the options to exit appear to work. Q3 tells you to check that Thunderbird program really has been shut down via Task Manager. on 'Applications' tab has the Thunderbird program stopped running. On 'Processes' tab has 'thunderbird.exe' stopped ? If yes, great, if no then select Thunderbird and click on 'End Process. Confirm what you found and what you did. Q4. Once Thunderbird has been fully exited, then in the Profile folder, look for and Delete the parent.lock file if it is still existing. The parent.lock file will always be there if thunderbird is running. But if a glitch has occurred, then it may well still be there even after you have followed instructions to exit Thunderbird and check in Task Manager. If you do not exit Thunderbird then anything you do in the Profile folder will have no effect. then delete the other files as stated. Confirm you have deleted all the mentioned files. Then progress to next request.

Okay, I give up on this stupid bloody misprogrammed piece of software.

I don't know what Mozilla did to break Thunderbird this badly but I am sick and tired of answering questions I have no idea as to the meaning behind them. This error occurred when Thunderbird updated itself to V38, and all I know is that when and if a version of Thunderbird is available and downloadable that is greater than the aforementioned version, that maybe it will have fixed whatever update error occurred.

If Thunderbird devs are unable to look directly into my local copy of the Thunderbird installation via a tool of some description i would ask that this tool be developed.

If Mozilla or any Thunderbird developer wishes to pursue this matter further and has sufficient knowledge to decipher this messed up installation over the internet then please send a Cortana request to this semi-obsfucated email address: HYDEGEOFF at GMAIL dot COM

OTHERWISE: This problem is considered to be unsolvable. It should be marked as closed and not resolved in this situation.

IF YOU DO NOT WISH TO HAVE A CORTANA SESSSION TO FIND OUT WHAT WENT WRONG YOU ARE UNDER NO OBLIGATION WHATSOEVER TO REPLY OR TO EMAIL ME.

That is all, good bye for now.

I'm sorry to hear you are unable to follow instructions.

Thunderbird is free software which is your choice to use or not. This website makes no charge for the free advice from people offering their free time to assist from this forum, but if you are incapable for whatever reason to follow instructions then I suggest you pay for help.

As there are no costs involved in using Thunderbird, there are no monies for paying people to sit on the end of a computer/phone etc. Reviewing all the past comments, you seem to have been more interested in demanding personal attention from unavailable developers than following instructions to try to resolve your issue, so at your request I'll not waste any more of my free time.

Toad-Hall said

I'm sorry to hear you are unable to follow instructions. Thunderbird is free software which is your choice to use or not. This website makes no charge for the free advice from people offering their free time to assist from this forum, but if you are incapable for whatever reason to follow instructions then I suggest you pay for help. As there are no costs involved in using Thunderbird, there are no monies for paying people to sit on the end of a computer/phone etc. Reviewing all the past comments, you seem to have been more interested in demanding personal attention from unavailable developers than following instructions to try to resolve your issue, so at your request I'll not waste any more of my free time.

The "incapable of following instructions" part was due to the fact that I keep getting the folders mixed up. If I'm not going to the correct folder in the first place, no use me trying, is there now? Or do you wish for me to shoot myself in the proverbial foot?

As for the spiel about the way Thunderbird support is offered, that's neither here nor there. What I want to see is an improvement in the way you track and manage errors and broken installations. If the Thunderbird developers wish to actually and really help anyone, then they've already got the fact that Nightly can report troubleshooting information of certain types back to Nightly's developers.

When such developments start happening, then maybe - just maybe, mind you - I'll finally get this broken Thunderbird installation fixed. Until such time there seems to be nothing to discuss with you, excepting the fact that Thunderbird support continues to stay in the dark ages and isn't actually more helpful. Sure, you can help those who know what they're doing but if I stuff up on something simple like the folder I'm looking into then there really needs to be an installation checking tool that does a better attempt at finding the error.

Thunderbird is getting to be so popular they really should consider a proper one-time subscription fee, probably annually payable and affordable to even low-end users, but that's not up to you or me, that's up to the Mozilla corporation. I therefore fail to see why you went on about free support at all, as it certainly doesn't seem to be doing me any good, anyway.

I still have the problem of Thunderbird not properly exiting when the Task Manager shows that it has exited. Thunderbird clearly is not cleaning itself up properly after it is run or is leaving traces of itself that show up even after a reboot.

I cannot get around this problem, therefore I cannot use Thunderbird to actually do anything useful.

I've even tried uninstalling and reinstalling Thunderbird, which finally completely broke the Thunderbird installation as it no longer works at all.

Until such time as the Thunderbird developers actually and really fix Thunderbird not properly closing itself and detecting something that makes it think it's already running then I will be forever unable to fix Thunderbird.

As of now, this issue with Thunderbird is so severe that it cannot be fixed by me alone, as I don't know why it is broken, I only know it's broken. Can't help myself to fix a goddam email client, yeah that's how bad things are over on this side of the pond.

I resign myself to the fact that I'm going to have to use the gmail web client until such time as either Thunderbird gets fixed, or that I can find another email client that doesn't break itself all of the time.

I still also have the problem of Thunderbird not starting and giving me the the error message saying "Your Thunderbird profile cannot be loaded. it may be missing or inacessible." whenever i try to run Thunderbird and it informs me that another Thunderbird process is already running, even when nothing I know of is running.

If there are any processes that Thunderbird would detect as being itself, please list them in response here. Because if there is a Thunderbird process running, I don't know what it is called, and it's certainly not "thunderbird.exe".

That was the final nail in the Thunderbird coffin. I've uninstalled the folliwing:

Mozilla Thunderbird

Mozilla maintenance Service.

That at least solves the problem of me having to deal with Thunderbird not properly exiting. Now that it no longer exists I can't run it anymore. Goodbye Thunderbird you were a very long-lived bird but eventually you had to go. *sigh*

Edit, I found the email files. Removed paragraphs that had no basis.

I finally figured out how to get Thunderbird working again.

Apparently, there was an issue with getting Thunderbird to start in Safe Mode, this has been resolved.

The fact that there was much difficulty in getting Thunderbird to start in Safe Mode in the first place meant that I'd had to uninstall and reinstall Thunderbird before this option started working.

This enabled me to disable the Lightning add-on from within Thunderbird. This has resolved the rest of the issues I was having.

This issue is now solved.