More on Eudora 8 beta 6 -- window problems

I continue to encounter odd problems with Eudora 8.  As time passes, and I restart Eudora, the windows shown at Eudora startup slowly seem to degenerate, until it's impossible to do anything.  I found a procedure (involving editing prefs.js) that fixes the problem.

The first symptom is that old messages are opened (and the windows I had open at last close do not reopen).

Then a window with no content shows up amid the other windows.

Then, I start getting mailox windows without the tree view on the left hand side. 

Finally, the only windows that open on startup are windows of messages (not of mailboxes).  This makes it impossible to scroll through the inbox.

This is another problem with the files in the profile; I've not traced down exactly what's wrong, but I guessed that it had to do with the lines in the prefs.js file that is stored in the root of each profile.  On Win7, it's at

c:\Users\{yourname}\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles\{profname}\prefs.js

The AppData directory is, by default, not visible with Windows Explorer; you can change your folder settings to make it visible, or just use a command ine tool to open a command window in the right location.  If none of this is making sense, you probably need to get help from someone who has the bad karma to have had to learn this for themselves, as the workaround won't make much sense.

I guessed, based on experience with Eudora, that the problem was in prefs.js; I suppose that if I deleted prefs.js and restarted, Eudora would recreate prefs.js and fix the problem. However, I didn't want to lose all my imported settings from Eudora 7.1, and I didn't want to have to re-enter my tag definitions (also stored in prefs.js) and account definitions (ditto). So I looked at the file and experimented until I found the following procedure.

1. Exit from Eudora
2. Make sure that Eudora is not running, by looking in Task Manager > Processes.  If you see one still running, and you just did step 1, give Eudora a little while to exit. 
3. Makes a backup copy of prefs.js, just in case something goes wrong.
4. Open prefs.js in notepad or a similar text editor.
5. Search for lines containing the text "penelope.mailbox://". If your setup is like mine, you'll see a large block of lines similar to thils:

   user_pref("penelope.mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Code%20Review.window.fpcollapsed", false);
   user_pref("penelope.mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Code%20Review.window.fpsplitter", "");
   user_pref("penelope.mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Code%20Review.window.fpwidth", 200);
   user_pref("penelope.mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Code%20Review.window.height", 720);
   user_pref("penelope.mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Code%20Review.window.mpheight", 200);
   user_pref("penelope.mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Code%20Review.window.mpwidth", 200);
   user_pref("penelope.mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Code%20Review.window.screenX", 89);
   user_pref("penelope.mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Code%20Review.window.screenY", 105);
   user_pref("penelope.mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Code%20Review.window.tpsplitter", "collapsed");
   user_pref("penelope.mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Code%20Review.window.width", 1280);
   user_pref("penelope.mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Drafts.window.fpcollapsed", false);
   user_pref("penelope.mailbox://nobody@Local%20Folders/Drafts.window.fpsplitter", "");
   ...

   These lines are the problem. I found that if I simply delete all such lines, the problem goes away.
6. Delete the matching lines.
7. Save the file, close the editor, turn three times widdershins, and restart Eudora.

Eudora will recreate its default window layout when you restart.