Problems running TBP from C: drive

The problems are two: Changing the "local directory" to point to a USB stick, and if that is managed, problem with local folders being deleted from USB stick.

I work at a university. Users on our network have no administrative privileges. Our main campus IT discourages the use of any e-mail client (advocating using the web interface, which is truly awful). Our local IT department is stretched unbearably thin; they would install regular TBird if they had time to do so for me, but they really don't -- it takes months to get any custom software installed.

I have always used TBird Portable to get around both of these two problems. I have a USB stick with Portable Apps on it, including TBP. In addition, I had installed Portable Apps on my office C: drive, to allow me to run TBP that way -- it's faster and I figured it might save some wear on the USB drive. I also have TBP installed on my home computer. I had set the "Local Directory" for both the office and home computers to refer to the "Local Folders" directory on the USB drive. This worked great. I could check e-mail from anywhere, and all downloaded e-mail (i.e., those in local folders) was available to me from any machine because they all referenced the same USB storage for my local folders (i.e., all mail downloaded off my imap account).

After a week of serious computer problems at the office, I was given a new CPU. I again installed Portable Apps, including TBP, but ran into problems. First problem was that, when running the C: drive version, I was unable to change the "Local Directory" for either the settings in the imap account or for the "Local Folders" account settings. I tried browsing to the preferred directory -- it didn't change. I tried going to that directory outside of TBird and copying the path and pasting it in -- it did not change. I also tried manually typing it in, but I was unable to delete what was there or change it by any means. A local installation of TBP is useless if I can't access the stored, downloaded e-mails, so I decided to try copying the Profile file from my USB drive to the TBird folder on my hard drive, hoping that might somehow make it possible to alter the directory setting. Once I had done this, and launched the C: drive version of TBP, I was then able to change the "Local Directory" so that it pointed to the USB drive (no idea why that would have worked, but it did). I closed the C: drive version of TBP and then restarted that same C: drive version, and it seemed that everything was as I wanted it ... for about 30 seconds.

At that point, in the far left-hand side of the status bar, I noticed messages showing things like "Deleting To Read ||||||||" followed by "Deleting Reply Needed ||||||", etc., with each name (i.e., "To Read" or "Reply Needed") indicating a local folder. The processing whirlie thingie in the account tab was whirling away this entire time as well, indicating that it was TBP that was doing whatever was happening. Well, what it was doing was deleting every local folder and e-mail FROM THE USB DRIVE!!!

Fortunately, I had a back-up copy that was fairly recent, so I could restore most everything without too much trouble, and yes, I can run TBP solely from the USB drive (which I will do until I figure out how this happened), but I don't like surprises, and I don't understand why this happened, since I never had these problems before. I would like to run TBP from my C: drive at work, but even more than that, I would just like to know what happened so I can guard against it in the future.

I did check the virus software (McAfee) -- read through the logs, and also looked in the Quarantine folder -- and there is no indication that McAfee did this (Quarantine file is empty, log does not show any actions taken to delete any files). I also would be dubious of blaming McAfee because the dialogue indicating that the folders were being deleted was displayed in the TBP status bar, and I don't know why TBP would internally display activities run by a separate program. I think TBP did this.

I have to presume that I had some option selected or not selected that I didn't mean to have selected or not, but darned if I know what, especially since I just copied the settings over from my USB version, where everything seemed lovely and wonderful before all this. Otherwise, it seems connected with the arrival of the new computer (same computer but a slightly different model -- Dell Optiplex 760 replacing a Dell Optiplex 745), but again, darned if I can deduce what is different other than the minimal boost from 745 to 760.

Thanks for any thoughts.