Thunderbird distress

A couple of years ago I changed from Outlook to T’bird. Have enjoyed and used it since.
Several weeks ago it crashed. I have been to mozillazine and have followed the directions for copying and restoring my profile. I hasn’t worked. I find some of the instructions hard to follow, particularly since I’m of the paper vs. on screen generation.
Have looked on the web for other sources of help and have put it on techguy.org to no avail.
Are there other resources available to me?
Any help appreciated. I miss the e-mails but miss my address book more.
M