Since I overwrite my GRUB boot loader (long story) whilst installing windows xp I’ve had to reinstall some of my fav applications all over again.
Naturally I wanted to keep my thunderbird settings so I just copied my profile from my Ubuntu partition (~/.thunderbird/profiles/ I think) to my XP partition (C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles). Big mistake.
Now thunderbird won’t even run. Its not your typical locked profile error (details on how to fix here) but its just as easily fixed. Remove all profiles from C:\Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\Thunderbird\Profiles and restart Thunderbird. You won’t be able to import your profile but at least Thunderbird works.
Hope this helps.