Missing thunderbird

[wendyl]

A couple of days ago my husband lost all his thunderbird email his pc has XP. We realised this when a message said he needed to set up email account. I have set up a new account and he is now up and running again but I have been unable to get back those he had read or sent. I contacted the Mozilla helpline and was directed to a help site but but I have not succeeded what with references to operating systems and switching off etc. It seems I need to use profile manager. Can anyone give straightforward step by step directions so as to keep him happy and leave me to get on with my own work.
Have not been on this site lately. Hope you all had a lovely Christmas - thanks for all help in 2007 and hope the gremlins slowing everything down and driving us all nuts in Quizzes and puzzles have not been here too! Have a peaceful and prosperous New Year

[ACtheTROLL]

hi

pop3 mail removes the message from the server and transfers it to the PC for reading .... which is a pain in cases like this where (in effect) more than 1 PC is being used.

1 option .... if your ISP provides a web mail interface (many do) it could quite likely still be there.

check their site

[wendyl]

Thanks ACtheTROLL for coming to my rescue - again
My ISP does have webmail this too allows me to read just new mail or send. After setting up a new email account and receiving current emails it again disappeared last night and now is requesting I set up an account to receive (at the moment there is no mail in box anyway) Obviously I am concerned as to what may be causing the repeated disappearance and preventing it We have a home network with 2 PCs (both wired after some problems with wireless) My husband has XP and I have Vista touch wood - I have not had any similar problems and this is the only thing we are aware of occurring on his both using Firefox
Any further offered advice appreciated thanks

[ACtheTROLL]

you have Vista touch wood??? is this a new o/s ;-)

e-mail accounts are normally forever (not just for christmas!) .... I've had many problems trying to get rid of old accounts (my old BT dialup account is still stopping me snagging my "Ideal" address)

using whatever e-mail reader shouldn't have any bearing on the actual e-mail account (which is provided by your ISP)
so if you moved from thunder to outlook ... you just config the new reader to the existing account.

unless I'm misunderstanding
it sounds possible that your ISP is having trouble with their servers.

for personal use I have a google account that goes everywhere with me ... and is ISP independant.

My ISP mail I use for "official" stuff

can you send yourself (or hubby) mail?
if it is the address that's gone ... you'd expect a return slip saying undeliverable

[wendyl]

ACtheTROLL Yes I have had Vista (ultimate) since spring 2006 No major problems so far (fingers crossed)
Both of us have gmail accounts although do not use much although if hubby was using that he probably wouldn't have the current problem. I do use mine for archiving which is useful and have some old accounts too
I am not sure if you are misunderstanding but everything seems to be in place on our ISP accounts with which we have domain names and websites
I have just set up his email account yet again and have successfuly sent an email which arrived safely
I have also sent a further message for help to Thunderbird forum - so far no response but it does seem to me that the problem lies with Thunderbird and I will try to be patient

Meanwhile perhaps I should check through my inbox in case I want to save some emails to gmail!!

[ACtheTROLL]

hi

I did sort of misunderstand ... when you said set up new account ....
personally ... I stick with outlook - it does have faults .... but problems seem to be sorted relatively quickly (smug).

this is possibly what you've already seen ...
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?p= 3188548&sid=d04bd70fe8d5123038717c7d3b07642c

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_a_profile _that_suddenly_disappeared

but it looks as if your problem isn't unheard of .... the fix seems reasonably straight forward (and quite optimistic)

bit worrying though .... see how you get on

[wendyl]

Thanks I'll have another go but the last link is the one I was trying to use without success.
It will need rather more problems before I go over to outlook though not used for years having mainly used netscape before Thunderbird.
Have to go out now but will start afresh later and let you know if I succeed