Thunderbird Portable

Hello boys and girls. I am using "version 2.0.0.17 (20080914)"
In the section,
Using Thunderbird with Webmail (Hotmail, Yahoo, etc)
it says,
"Thunderbird is configured to download and remove your mail from the server by default. If you don't want that to happen, update your account settings after setting up your account" (and before checking your email).

The question is,
Exactly where AND what setting or SETTINGS do I
need to set or unset to make SURE, ALL my emails remain
on hotmail ?
I do not see a definitive area, sorry.

Ok, so I have TBP, and I also downloaded WebMail, with the Hotmail add-on. But I have no idea what to do so I can get my messages. Can someone please help me?

For the last few days, I am getting time-out errors trying to access my hotmail account. I'm using the Web-Mail plugin (have had no problems for almost 1 year); I haven't made any modifications to the account, and I'm able to log in directly to the site via internet. Any suggestions?

I've told each account to use the "drafts" folder in Local Folders so I can eliminate the clutter of having one with each account (having them gives me less tasks/events on the lighting calendar being displayed below the Local Folders.

recently my school set up Exchange Server 2003 on its network, and i started thinking about how Outlook could connect to it. would anyone know how to configure Thunderbird to use an exchange server for ingoing and outgoing mail?

This may sound weird, and I simply do not understand how/why it happens. But for some reason TB occasionally presents new incoming emails at the bottom of an old email. To give an example I received yesterday an email seemingly a copy of an email I previously received 16th April 2008, but with the new email added at the bottom. The new email displays the old emails date, but of course gets a new "Order Received" number.

I need to backup my mail messages, my adress book...
How can i do it?? Please, someone help me with this problem

I have a bunch of emails from various accounts that are in my sent box on local folders. I am trying to reorganize and put them into sent boxes for the individual accounts. My problem is that the email box just says my name and not what account I sent them from. Is there anyway I can fix this?

I had this strange problem where I was trying to access a samba share who's folder was not created cause my entire windows xp system to be practically freeze to a point where I had to reboot.

However on reboot I noticed the two portable apps firefox/thunderbird which was running at the time had their complete profile wiped clean! Lost all account information in thunderbird and firefox lost all passwords...

Luckily I had a backup over 2 months ago but anyone know how this happened and what's the proper way to prevent this from happening.

Running Thunderbird Portable on a flash drive with U3. I'd like to change which folder contains all the files that contain my messages. Is this humanly possible?