I'm not sure this is a PA issue as such but it seems to me there may be some versioning issues happening (I am not suggesting either the PA or Moz communities are at fault as I can't work out which it might be).
Background: Having recently upgraded to TB9.0 via PA, I found a lot of my Add-Ons (most notably Lightning) weren't working. I found Lightning 1.1 but think TB9.0.1 would be a more appropriate release for many / most rather than TB 10.0 beta 1 which is what I am currently being offered (not through PA). I see a previous poster has noticed a disjoint between offered update and beta channel.
This is, as much as anything else, a heads up for people that don't want to play with Moz betas unwittingly.
I think this may be a similar issue to the one Cheetah raised on December 26, 2011 - 5:10am but I have made it separately because I am not sure.
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Wm ...
best disable the auto-update in thunderbird portable for now ....