I use Thunderbird, and when I opened it, it asked if I wanted to create a new account. It did not recognize the profiles I was using for a few years. I removed and reinstalled Thunderbird, but that did not list all of the profiles.

The mail files were not removed, but something must have affected "profiles.ini", the file that lists the profiles and their locations.

The same problem happened again. This time I decided to do a fresh install of Windows XP. Now the missing profiles problem appears for the third time!

Some Firefox preferences also reverted to their default values.

Is this a malware problem? I'm not new to computers, but this problem has me stumped.

Profiles.ini is a text file that you can edit in a text editor (notepad, etc). If you still have the missing profiles in your Thunderbird profile folder, you can simply add those manually to profiles.ini

Uninstalling Firefox and/or Thunderbird does not affect the profile folders; if you wish to delete them you must do so manually.

k027,

Thanks for getting back to me. I have one profile, 07cevxei.default, and the profile.ini file contains:

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=default
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/07cevxei.default

Thunderbird doesn't recognize that profile.

When the problem first started, Thunderbird recognized some but not all profiles. (I moved these other profiles so they do not interfere with my newest installation.)

k027,

Thanks for the link and helpful information. The article on profiles.ini is great to have.

I need some time to troubleshoot the problem. Fortunately, I have a few computers, so I can compare their respective configuration files.

I have been using Netscape/Mozilla mailers for years, and this type of problem never occurred.

Stay tuned.