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I tried to open TB portable, but instead of the familiar prompt to ask me to enter my master password, it asks me to create either an email or newsgroup account.
I checked the data path and all my local mail folders are there, but it seems that the account profiles are corrupted or messed up.
I wonder if this is a known issue? Any way to get out of it to recover my account settings?
My TB portable is version 2.0.0.14 (20080421).
Thanks.
sheila9
This will often occur as a result of corruption which is far more common on a removable device than a local drive (I've had it happen to my local TB after a crash). That's one of the reasons we stress backups. Your best bet is to open your most recent backup (using 7-Zip is fine) and restore your prefs.js file since that is the file that is most likely corrupt (don't worry if your backup is a couple weeks old as prefs.js doesn't change often... only when you change settings, accounts, etc). Be sure to check your drive for errors as well.
I didn't backup it. How to fix it?
thanks.
is your best bet. What are you trying to get back? If it is the emails that you put in the Local folders, a new install in the same location will put everything back where it is. Be sure that your folders in the Local Folders are not named something that is the same as the default folders. Like "Inbox" or "Sent" Rename those folders first to something else before you reinstall over the old location.
Unfortunately, with a reinstall, you'd have to set up your remote email servers again and your preferences and addons manually. 
Would it be a useful idea to have the app launcher make a small backup of corruption sensitive files and detect if they are corrupted somehow to restore them?
I've re-installed TBP and all the old mail folders are there, both in windows' explorer and inside TBP. But in TBP, there is no email or anything in the mail folders. The folders at windows show they have many KB or MB in size.
How to fix that?
Thanks.
Sheila2
You should close Thunderbird and then delete the .msf files in your folders. These are the index files. Thunderbird will recreate them.
Also, be sure you back this up before manually playing with files just in case you make a mistake.
I moved the msf files to somewhere else, but still folders show no email at all.
Thanks.
sheila9
I had same problem, came here first (in a mild panic), and did what John suggested, dug out an archived prefs.js file.
Worked perfectly!
Thanks John.
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