Tb 1.5.0.9

Have new 'puter, HP laptop, SP2, etc. Thought I followed Ramona's instrucitons for copying the Thunderbird folder from old to new 'puter.

On new computer, TB comes up with error:
"Thunderbird is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Thunderbird process, or restart your system.

Task Mgr does not show TB active. Re-starting makes no change.

In hindsight, I think Ramona's instructions were that mail should NOT be d/l before making this change. I think that might be my problem. Guess I was too anxious to get this gem up and running.

Any suggestions that will help me to get around this frustrating problem would be greatly appreciated.

Bob

 

Bob,

Assuming that once you installed TB on the laptop, that you either renamed, or deleted the new Thunderbird Profile, and copied the Thunderbird folder from the old PC to the laptop. This is all you should have had to do for the move.

If you moved from one OS to another (e.g., Windows 98 to Windows XP), or if your Windows boot drive letter has changed (e.g., from "C:\" to "D:\ ") or your Windows login/user name is different, then you will need to edit the profiles.ini file, located in the Thunderbird folder, as follows:

Ensure the "Name=" line is the name of the profile folder you copied to the laptop
Change "IsRelative=1" to "IsRelative=0" only if the Laptop Profile is located on a drive other than C:
Change the "Path=" line to the actual location of the new profile folder, e.g., Path=D:/Profiles/xxxxxxxx.profilename
OR
Path=Profiles/xxxxxxxx.profilename

It will be similar to this:

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=bigbird
IsRelative=1
Path=Profiles/123abc4d.bigbird
Default=1

If your backup was on CD the file attributes will be "Read only ", unless you zipped the Thunderbird folder. You will have to go into the files and change the attribute by removing the tick beside "Read only ".

Let us know if this helps...

 

Welcome back, Ramona. Understood you were under the weather a bit.

I thought I had followed your instruction at the time, but it's apparent I must have dropped something. I do have my profiles located on a separate partiton:

F:\MozProfile\RDavis-Cape-F\bvwq5hjv.slt.

I zipped the last folder loaded it on a CD. With CD in new computer, I unzipped the .slt folder in a temp folder and copied it the RDavis-Cape-F folder.

I have another strange symptom: When FF (2.0.0.1) loads, it loads my IP's home page (comcast.net) but in two tabs; kinda-sorta visual echo (??)! The same profile in the old 'puter opens up only one IP home page (normal).

I'll clean out FF and TB completely in the new 'puter and start over, using your tips.

Thanks and here's for a happy new year to you and the whol BBS family.

Bob

 

Complete uninstalled both FF and TB in new computer. Followed with cleaning registry of any mozilla FF or TB (using JV16 Powertools, vers. 1.4) -- there was a few registry.

Reinstalled FF and TB, then zipped Profiles from old computer again and transferred to new comp. via CD after unzipping.

No real change except after disabling all extensions/themes, the "echoed" home page tab has disappeared (nor connected to IP yet). The other symptom where either TB or FF can load but not together. For example:

If TB is opened first, then double clicking on the FF icon on desktop results in the error,

"Firefox (or Thunderbird) is already running, but is not responding. To open a new window, you must first close the existing Firefox process, or restart your system "

Same error is displayed if I open FF first, then try to open TB.

Neither of the "fixes" noted in the error work.

I'm sure I'm overlooking something. The old comp. is XP SP1 and the new one, XP SP2. This difference wouldn't be coming into play here, would it?

Any ideas?
Bob

 

Bob,

Since you copied only the salted folder, and not the entire Thunderbird folder to the Laptop, then you need to edit the profiles.ini file by correcting the path to the Profiles folder: F:\MozProfile\RDavis-Cape-F\bvwq5hjv.slt.

Your profiles.ini files would look similar to this:

Code:

[General]
StartWithLastProfile=1

[Profile0]
Name=bvwq5hjv.slt
IsRelative=0
Path=F:\MozProfile\RDavis-Cape-F\bvwq5hjv.slt.

Default=1

Appreciate the welcome back, and still recovering from pneumonia. Feel much better now!

A Happy and properous New Year to you and yours!

 

If you have pneumonia, wouldn't it more properly be called "Ramonia "?

 

Jim,

Or Rumonia!

 

Rumonia,

Tried your profile change. Sadly, the "FF (or TB) already running , , ," error still pops up. I can use FF alone; have to exit FF in order to use TB and have to exit TB before I can use FF (???).

Any other thoughts? I've googled it but, not being the brightest star in the fermament, the language is somewhat challenging.

What about a "locked profile" that google comes up with? What are the minimum files I need to keep bookmarks and mail folders? Still have a hunch it's going to be something very simple.

Bob

 

Bob,

Did you edit the profiles.ini file? If not, then do that first... If your Profile on the old PC is on the F: drive, then you will need to point the profiles.ini file to the correct location on the Laptop, C:, etc., and the Profile Path.

Have you tried opening Firefox in Safe Mode? It could very well be an extension that is causing the problem, so you may have to eliminate them.

Also take a look here:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_in_use
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Standard_diagnostic

 

Ramona,
Yes, I did make the changes to the profiles.ini but the "FF (or TB) is still running . . ." error still haunts me. The refs didn't help much, but then one must crank in the fact that a dimwit is trying to interpret these things.

Discovered, while going thru all this, that if I used separate profiles for FF and TB, the problem goes away. Now, I have TB using the profiles in "Documents and Settings, etc" folder and FF using the F:\MozProfiles\ . . ., etc.+ folder.

For the moment, it is a sloppy "work-around ", but it allows me to operate both progs at the same time.

Still remains a mystery why this particular HP laptop (DV9005US) can't seem to behave while the older one (ZT1130) works like gangbusters. It may well be that I simply have too much left over "junque" in my profiles folder, e.g., (F:\MozProfiles\RDavis-Cape-F\ bv..., etc. "

I'll tackle it later and try simply cleaning out the extra bookmark-1.html, bookmarkOrig.htm, and other long past file that are no longer needed.

Thanks for your efforts. Hope you're feeling better. This is a lousy time of the year for such ailments. Seems to be going around everywhere.

Confused Bob

 

I am a firm believer in not fighting "city hall ". In this case, I was going to suggest the creation of a new profile, first. Over 90% of the problems I encountered went away with a new profile.
The only program which would respond to uninstalling/reinstalling, keeping the same profile is NS8.x. But, that program is beyond my comprehension.

 

Bob ...

Sorry to come late to the party, but you just said something that I have to respond to ...

I don't understand why you were trying to use the same profile for both FF and TB to begin with. They're different programs and require different profiles. Both the program and the profile folders can be named anything you want, and located anywhere you want.

As an example, the paths to my FF program and profile folders are, respectively,

E:\MOZILLA\FIREFOX\PROGRAM\FF2.0

E:\MOZILLA\FIREFOX\PROFILES\JSS​

and to my TB program and profile folders,

E:\MOZILLA\THUNDERBIRD\PROGRAM\TB1.5

E:\MOZILLA\THUNDERBIRD\PROFILES\JSS​

Also, I've found that directly editing the profiles.ini files doesn't always guarantee that FF or TB will be able to find the respective profile. It's always safer to use FF's or TB's Profile Manager.

HTH.

 

Jim,
I did not read GPa's post carefully enough. I have no idea how one would be able to use the same profile for both FF and TB. I had meant to suggest that new profiles be used.

 

BINGO! As Jim and Westside responded, that is definitely the problem. You have two separate applications, requiring two separate profiles, which you now know.

 

Red face but not confused

I was laboring under the belief that one profile handled both programs. Duuuuuuh! and Duuuuuu again!

A lesson well learned and won't soon be forgotten.

My thanks to all for your responses. See, it ain't easy educating "us ol' timers ". I set up one profile for Thunderbird some years ago and never really had call to change it. FireFox was operating locally on C: and TB on F:.

Bob

 

Hey Bob,

No need to be embarrassed! It sometimes takes time for the learning curve, and you do very well. How else will you learn if you don't make some mistakes?

I used the *.slt folder for Firefox for quite some time, but finally created a new Profile down the road.

Glad that all is well!

 

It is never too late to learn. Been there and done that.
sometimes one can outsmart him(her)self. I cannot even comprehend different drives. So, there!

 

Reading through this post, I notice that the responders have FF on different drives and not C:\. Is it normal to install FF on a different partition?

Profiles were also mentioned. I had profiles way back when I used Netscape 4. However, when I installed FF I never had a profile manager pop up, nor do I find a profile folder.

I check in my FF directory and do not find any salted folder. Am I missing something?

Any clarification would be appreciated.

 

It depends on the individual. I have only one drive, which is the default C.

You don't see the Profile Manager if you have only one profile, i.e. "default ".
I have several profiles, and I would see the profile manager, if I did not edit the Properties|Target line on the shortcut. I use -p profilename to open the specific profile. The profile folder is hidden in WinXP, like all other profiles, and is in Application Data|Mozilla|Firefox

You don't find anything in the FF directory, as I said before. The format is a bit different, a...low salt variety.

 

Hi Ann,

To elaborate on what Westside said, many of us partition our hard drives for any of a number of reasons. In my case, I try to keep my C: drive as lean and clean as possible, so it contains only the Windows and Docs & Settings folders, the heart of the XP OS.

Because all installed programs write to the Registry I could locate them on C: but, for housekeeping reasons, I place them on my D: partition.

Data (documents, images, music, movies, etc.) go on my E: partition. I've chosen to locate FF and TB there because I make changes in them frequently, and they're easily accessible there.

My F: partition is used to archive every program installed on my computer, except those installed from a CD.

This may seem like overkill, but the advantage is that, should I need to reformat for whatever reason, I need only format the C: and D: drives. A hard drive crash ( ) is another story, entirely, but should that happen, I have backups on a second hard drive.

To further answer your question, FF's program and profile folders are distinct from each other, and the profile folder is not normally located within the program folder (it can be, but only if the user chooses to locate it there).

With the default installation (which I assume most users use), the program folder is

C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\​

and the profile folder is

C:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\f7evz2yb.Default User (the eight-character alphanumeric combination will be different for each profile)​

I don't think FF uses salted profile folders, as I'm unable to generate one ... I believe that they were used in the suites (Mozilla, Seamonkey, etc.) though.

You can do away with the default profile name by using FF's Profile Manager to name your profile folder something else, such as ANN.

The Application Data folder and its subfolders are hidden by default. Display them by opening Folder Options > View and selecting Show hidden files and folders.