557231 - All saved emails, inboxes, settings lost, started all over again with a clean slate - lost profile after computer crash

Status: RESOLVED INCOMPLETE

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[unlvraptor]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.1; en-US; rv:1.9.2.2) Gecko/20100316 Firefox/3.6.2 (.NET CLR 3.5.30729)
Build Identifier: 

Opened Mozilla after a computer crash. Started up as if I had never used the program before. Reinstated my POP and SMTP settings. Downloads mail fine again, but all my inboxes, sent mail, trash, and stored emails have been erased.

Reproducible: Didn't try

Comment 1

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

what version of Thunderbird?
always uncertain, but perhaps this doc might help - http://kb.mozillazine.org/Recovering_a_profile_that_suddenly_disappeared

Comment 2

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

This is a serious problem so we'd like to understand your issue.
Also need to confirm which version of thunderbird.  (you're on win7, so assuming version 3.0)

however, no response yet, so => incomplete

Comment 3

[unlvraptor]

It says right on the bug report its 3.0. Anyway, the emails were not important. I started with a fresh profile and fresh copy of Thunderbird. Everything is fine now. I think my PrefsJS profile was corrupted so I deleted it. I just had to start with a clean slate. Annoying but over. Mark the post for deletion.

Comment 4

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(I see nothing in comment 0 about thunderbird version)

unlvrapto, thanks for the feedback.  with more coherent thinking on my part, we want this to stay open, so we can dup it to another bug or follow up on the lost profile issues that are still being reported against version 3

Comment 5

[Ludovic Hirlimann [:Usul]]

(In reply to comment #4)
> (I see nothing in comment 0 about thunderbird version)
> 
> unlvrapto, thanks for the feedback.  with more coherent thinking on my part, we
> want this to stay open, so we can dup it to another bug or follow up on the
> lost profile issues that are still being reported against version 3

But we don't have any data - and it hasn't been duped yet so what's the value of keeping it open ?

Comment 6

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

FYI.
Depedency tree for meta bug 193638 with "Show Resolved" is collection of this kind of report - complaint on needed profile recreation or needed redifinition of accounts only, no clear status description about lost or corrupted prefs.js, no data for diagnosis by bug opener or by "me too" posters.
Duping is usually imposible because even "lost prefs.js or corrupted prefs.js" is usually unclear in this kind of report.

Comment 7

[WADA:World Anti-bad-Duping Agency]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I think my PrefsJS profile was corrupted so I deleted it.

As you can see see in depedency tree for meta bug 193638, problem of corruption of prefs.js(and lost prefs.js too) apparently still exists. However, it's impossible to analyze problem because no one provided corrupted prefs.js data yet and no one provided detailed information about when/with what condition the corruption of prefs.js occurred yet.
Reporter, please keep backup of profile directory(and profiles.ini also) if you will experience problem again, before you start to recover from corrupted prefs.js problem.

Closing as INCOMPLETE, with setting dependency to meta bug 193638.

As seen in some bugs, some peopls requested backup of prefs.js before update of prefs.js or backup of prefs.js at least just before first update after restart(they were WONTFIXED by reason that "safe file writing" is already used for prefs.js update).
If you believe such enhancement of backup of prefs.js is mandatory in case of prefs.js loss or corruption, please open separate bug for such enhcement.

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

(In reply to comment #5)
> But we don't have any data - and it hasn't been duped yet so what's the value
> of keeping it open ?

the lack of data is less important as the mere fact that dataloss did happen, i.e what wada suggests.  In other words, this is such a serious and terrible type of bug that we want to treat it differently than other types of bugs, and it must get tracked somewhere.  And we don't want to lose track of it just because no one has been paying much attention to lost profile issues or dupme issues, or both.

My gut reaction is bug 193638 is past it's prime and that in the post bug 477934 world we might want to tracking via a post-v2 (v3 and higher) tracking bug. One bug per OS may be overkill, but the thought has occurred to me that tracking by OS might end up being useful.