Hi Folks;
My problems with T'Bird portable started a couple of weeks ago (I WAS running T'Bird 2.x) off a USB drive. T'Bird just stopped working - wasn't able to invoke it at all.
So, I bought a brand new Kingston USB drive, installed T'Bird Portable 3.0.1 and for four days it worked just fine :). However, now when I try to invoke T'Bird all I get is the Splash screen and poof - nothing more!
I read in this forum about deleting the \ThunderbirdPortable\App\Thunderbird folder and re-installing T'Bird. I tried that, but when I first tried to delete that folder, XP complained that one of the directories could not be read. I believe it's the \ThunderbirdPortable\App\Thunderbird\updates directory; I see some very strange looking ascii characters for the file names - such as:
I've tried to start T'Bird in safe-mode and I get the same thing - just the splash screen and nothing further.
So this is the second failure with T'Bird Portable (on 2 separate USB drives) in the space of a week.
Any ideas folks?
Thanks,
Ramesh.
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Based on the "strange filenames" you're talking about, TBird may have gotten corrupted; you could try running CHKDSK to try fixing the corruption.
Not sure why TBird is doing that, though. What happens if you go back to 2.x?
"The question I would like to know, is the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. All we know about it is that the Answer is Forty-two, which is a little aggravating."
While this may be solved I found an elegant solution:
Use the original installer and reinstall TB-portable into the TB folder on your device. Update to the same version and BINGO!
TB-portable opens normally. All your folders and mail is there.
The experts here may know why this works.
IKEpod
simply it is done this way, it is supposed to work this way.
Often on a flash stick, things can go wrong, simply because the flash drives are not so reliable as many people think. Then reinstalling is first option if something goes wrong. Installation will not overwrite your personal folders there. Simply if personal folders are found and are ok, they will accepted as such.
The personal data is kept in separate folder, so it is more easy to make backup of it and avoid damage during updates etc.
Otto Sykora
Basel, Switzerland