I've just posted a pre-release of Thunderbird Portable 1.5.0.5. The new features are:
In-Place Upgrades - Thunderbird Portable now supports the ability to do what I'm calling an "in-place upgrade". This means that you can extract it right over an existing installation of Thunderbird Portable without losing any of your existing data and it'll Just Work (tm).
Live CD Support - Thunderbird Portable 1.5.0.5 now has built in support for running from a CD or other read-only medium (aka Thunderbird Portable Live). You just need to grab the INI from the Other\ThunderbirdPortableSource and drop it next to ThunderbirdPortable.exe. Edit it and set RunLocally to true. Just be sure to run ThunderbirdPortable.exe at least once BEFORE setting both these options so that it correctly sets up a default profile. Your thunderbird, profile, registry, gpg and plugins directories will be copied to the local machine's temp directory and Thunderbird Portable will execute from there. When you exit, all the temp files will be cleaned up.
Partial Update Support Fixed - I've fixed the partial update issue. Same as with Firefox, it was due to the Uninstall directory missing.
Guest/Limited Account Fixed - I've added detection and support for Guest and Limited Accounts so that the error about not being able to import into the registry will no longer appear.
Unread Email / Account Name Fix - I've added a fix that will allow Thunderbird Portable to clean up the additions Thunderbird makes to the registry within the UnreadMail section. This will prevent it from leaving behing an unread email message count that can't be fixed and leaving your account name (which some use their email address for) in the registry.
I think that's about everything. Please get some testing in on this ASAP as I'd like to push this release out for the world 
You can grab the self-extractor here:
Thunderbird Portable 1.5.0.5 (en-us) Pre-Release
(Please don't mention this release outside these forums as it is for testers only
and not intended as a wide-scale release.)
UPDATE: A new launcher has been released that internalizes the default registry settings... so even if you lose the thunderbird_portable.reg file, it will work as expected. Grab a copy of the new launcher (Thunderbird Portable Launcher 1.2.1.2) and drop it into the ThunderbirdPortable folder.
Thanks!
John
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These tend to be pretty stable; "testers urgently needed" is a bit of an overstatement, don't you think?
In any case, I'm testing it out now. Too bad I'm not at home and have to suffer through USB 1.1 (my cousin's computer is pretty old).
Edit: Nevermind. I take back that "overstatement" remark.
Why is Thunderbird still asking me if it should be my default email client? I thought you fixed that issue.
P.S.: Does WaitForThunderbird have to set to true if I want the registry-wrapper stuff to work correctly?
Posted from the best browser in the world: Fatzilla Fathawk! Oh, and it's portable, too!
What OS and settings are you using? If you're using AllowMultipleInstances, it can't do the registry stuff, so you'll get that prompt if your local TB is set to check that.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Windows XP Professional SP2--same as on my home computer (I should know--I installed the OS on this machine). AllowMultipleInstances is indeed set to false. My INI is as follows:
Oh, and there is no local copy of Thunderbird on this machine.
Posted from the best browser in the world: Fatzilla Fathawk! Oh, and it's portable, too!
Is the thunderbird_portable.reg file in there? Without it, it fails to set the default settings, so TB creates its own on launch... asking about defaults.
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
Go figure. I didn't notice the registry directory when I was moving my paths around to comply with my preferred structure, so I must have deleted it. I never even noticed thunderbird_portable.reg.
Oh, and you might want to remove unread.reg from the package. Not sure how big a deal it is to you, but it has your email address in it.
Posted from the best browser in the world: Fatzilla Fathawk! Oh, and it's portable, too!
Well, that's annoying. I'll be sure and ditch that.
And, there may be a possibility others will lose that .reg file, too. Especially if they import a profile, etc. So, I'm going to build that into the launcher itself and not make it an import.
Grab a copy of the new launcher: Thunderbird Portable Launcher 1.2.1.2
Sometimes, the impossible can become possible, if you're awesome!
John, I think you should lock these beta testing threads once you release the final.