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[Tom P.]

So - - weirdest damn thing.

Im having no problems with Firefox or Thunderbird. Then I boot up into Linux with a Live CD, something goes wonky during the boot and it hangs up. I do a hard reboot and open up XP and my Firefox and Thunderbird are FUBAR.

Bookmarks - gone
Extentions - gone
Settings - gone
Email - gone gone gone

Even the tool bar buttons are gone, so I cant check my email in Thunderbird, and even if I could, theres no button to click to reply to anything, or forward, or delete...

Then, to top it all off, all of my browsers search engines disappeared and it wont let me re-add them. Actually, come to think of it, it wont let me re-add the book marks that I lost or replace the extentions.

This seems to only effect my profile though. My wife has had zero issues with her thunderbird and netscape still works fine.

Ive tried every damn thing I can think of to fix the problem... NOTHING has worked. Even deleting it all and reinstalling doesnt work. It deletes just fine, and reinstalls just fine, but load the program and the same BS. No buttons, no search engines, no nothing.

Oh, and its not a virus - 3 different virus checks with 3 different programs show no virus's.

So now Im using SeaMonkey. Its a damn poor alternative, but at least I can bookmark stuff and check my email.

[Leonidas the Younger]

That is indeed odd, as a Live CD shouldn't be doing ANYTHING to your harddrive unless you expressly tell it to do so.

Which Live CD?

-- Leonidas

[Tom P.]

Ubuntu.

Im not certain that that is the cause of the problem, but it is the only known error to occur before the FF/TB debacle, and I have been having problems getting FF to load in Ubuntu. The Kubuntu Live CD loads FF just fine. Not Ubuntu though.

I created a new user, and got FF running under the new profile. I was able to recover my emails by BOOTING in safe mode, then running TB in Safe Mode, then running MozBackup, and taking the backup over to the new profile. I was able to boot and run TB normally on the new profile and all my emails and settings were there.

No joy on getting the same results with FF. MozBackup didnt even recognize that there was a FF profile.

Sokay though... its turned into a good opportunity to clean shop, and if the most I lost was a bunch of bookmarks I dont use? Big deal. Del.icio.us saves all the biggies.

[TrinitronX]

Your profiles.ini file may have somehow gotten messed up.  If you didn't try to install anything from the Live CD, it won't touch your HDD.  That didn't cause the problem.

Since you've uninstalled and re-installed stuff... your profile folder may have been deleted, if that's the case, sadly there's nothing much that can be done.  For Thunderbird, check in C:\Documents and Settings\<YOUR_XP_USERNAME>\Application Data\Thunderbird for "profiles.ini"  open it up in notepad or your favorite text editor, and make sure it points to your profile folder (if it still exists).  If your profile is still there, it will be a random folder name in the "Profiles" folder.  However, since you've re-installed, the profile you're using right now may be a new blank one... check for other folders in the Profiles folder too.  If there are more than one, you can edit profiles.ini to point to which one you want to use.
For Firefox, it's much the same.  The only difference really is to check in: C:\Documents and Settings\<YOUR_XP_USERNAME>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox for the profiles.ini and profile folders.

I'd reccommend making a backup of your profile folders next time, in case something like this happens again.