Earlier in the week my aging Windows XP install had a wobbly moment and failed to boot fully after it’s ‘moment’. After disk checking, scanning and booting from the Windows CD, the install was hosed.

Time for the dreaded reinstall of Windows. I saved my profile from the old install and other data before deleting the old partition for the reinstall. A fresh start is always best at times like that.

With a super quick, fresh Windows install up and running it was time to put Firefox and Thunderbird back. I copied two directories for each program from my old profile to the new profile, as follows…

In theses two paths c:\documents and settings\myProfile\local settings\application data\ and c:\documents and settings\myProfile\application data\ both of the Mozilla and Thunderbird directories. These are hidden directories, but you have Show hidden files turned on, right?

With these directories laying in wait in my new profile, I installed Firefox and Thunderbird. No messages, or warnings… no news is good news? When I ran the applications everything was just as I left them, addons all worked (OK, View in Chrome didn’t, but an  addon can’t work without it’s target program installed. ), all my email accounts and email history were there. Superb and painless. Sorted!