230105 - folders are not displayed

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 193638

(Core :: Preferences: Backend, defect)

Description

[mg8]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98)
Build Identifier: Mozilla 1.6b

When I open Mail/News, there are no folders at all displayed on the left side - 
even no Local Folders. When I open Mail/News Account Settings, I only see the 
(correct) information about SMTP server.
Before that, I was using Mozilla heavily for Mail and News on Max OS 10.2.8 or 
earlier 10.2.x versions.
Just before this bug happened, I tried to send an e-mail but got the error 
message that the SMTP server % is not correct. I restarted Mozilla and got this 
bug.
The bug happened with Mozilla 1.6b but is still there with Saturday's nightly 
build.

Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:

Comment 1

[David :Bienvenu]

your preferences got corrupted (the file is prefs.js) - it's not a mail database
issue. Your mail folders still should still be there. Is there a backup prefs.js
called prefs.bak in your user profile directory? You should be able to
reconstruct it by hand if not...

Comment 2

[mg8]

thanks. The backup file was apparently bad as well, but I had another account
set up on another Mac, which prefs.js I could use. Actually, I don't know what
the actual problem with my prefs.js file was and what I should have modified it
in there. Everything related to mail seemed to be fine. Is there a good
documentation around for this file? Also, what is the difference between the
pref.js in the Document folder vs. the prefs.js in the Library folder?

Anyway, this bug might be closed now. I suggest, however, to add this problem
and how to fix it in the help file!

Comment 3

[Frankie]

duping to main prefs.js bug
see also bug 170539

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 193638 ***