mozilla thunderbird crashes on launch

hey guys,

the other day i had a client who was running into an issue where they couldn't write to their thunderbird mailbox. checking the about i realized they were on version one so i thought i'd just update them to 3.x and maybe that would just fix the problem (they're using pop so i couldn't just delete the database).

well now when ever you open thunderbird it crashes. i was running process explorer and it'll show up for about a second then quit.

heres what i've tried;

reinstalling
uninstalling and reinstalling
renaming the user folder in application files and local folder adding a .old to it
tried it in another user

all result in the same thing, thunderbird launches then a second later it quits.
after renaming the users folders though it did stay open long enough to create a new user folder.

they're using windows xp sp3

thanks for any help,

-savvv