Cleanmaster Ate My E-Mail (?)

Hardware and technical stuff
1

Last week (I think) my PC told me my SSD was about out of space (probably Oblivion saved games). So I Googled something like “what is the best free disk cleanup tool” and off a list of results I picked Cleanmaster. I ran it, and it worked. Yahey!

This morning it gave me an alert that it could clean up another 4.x gigs, so I clicked the button. By coincidence later that morning my PC sound went out — I know it was coincidence because the problem turned out to be an RCA cable, which I replaced. In the course of troubleshooting, I restarted my PC a couple of times.

And when I went to check my e-mail via the usual Thunderbird shortcut, I got a message saying the target of the shortcut had been changed or moved. Same with the other shortcuts (desktop, toolbar, start menu). So I went to the programs x86 folder for Mozilla Thunderbird and found the folders all present but apparently empty of files.

I do have an e-mail archive I saved a few years ago, but I still may have lost important and dear correspondence. Is there a way to find and restore the Thunderbird archive?

2

So many disturbing parts of that post.

You can search your PC for mbox files. If they somehow still exist you can repoint thunderbird to them.

I presume no backups?

3

Like I said, I have a backup a few years old.

Are .mbox files definitely what Thunderbird uses? Is there a reliable file recovery tool I can try?

4

use windirstat next time.

5

Have you checked the recycling bin? Perhaps the files have not yet been permanently deleted.

6

I did check, and the bin was emptied — that was part of the cleanup. I had not put my Thunderbird files in there, obviously.

7

What about file recovery? Is there a tool anyone has had success with?

8

You mention program files is empty, but have you looked for the email profile in appdata?

9

That’s still there! So if I reinstall Thunderbird and aim it at that profile, I may well be good. I’ll back the profile up first. OK, everybody cross your fingers.

10

All fixed! Thanks, moss_icon.

11

Oh, and I found I did back up my profile only 6 months ago, so I knew all this then. Getting old.

12

nice one :)

13

Do you to try to stay off the cloud? If not, for $70/year and really no configuration whatsoever, you can get Backblaze cloud backup w/ unlimited storage and then won’t ever have any Cleanmaster panic moments again.

14

I’ll look into that. Thanks!

15

Hey, this is great! It has little Pac-Mans going back and forth as it scans a disk, and once they were done I used the tree to see within 30 seconds where an improbably large bolus of disk space was being used. Turns out my encryption/decryption software (AxCrypt) doesn’t delete its unencrypted copies of files after they’re closed, so they just pile up. Jeez!