Deleting duplicate folders

[ChadHerman]

I booted up Linux Mint 12, logged in and was surprised by a few changes that suddenly appeared. I went to run Thunderbird only to find that the icon on the side panel (the one that appears when you trigger the upper left-hand corner) was missing. I typed in the program's name and it appeared. I click on it and it asked me to set up a mail account. I started up Firefox to find that my add-ons were gone. I opened up the file manager and my Home directory had many folders with random alpha-numeric names with the word "crypt" in them. Most of the expected folders in the directory were missing. When I clicked on one, I saw it was .thumbnails/normal. I logged out and logged back in and found those folders gone and the normal folder layout was restored. The problem is I now have duplicates of the same folders. Attached is a screenshot showing a Bash listing of the Home directory. These duplicates do not show up in Nautilus.

My theory is that when I executed Thunderbird, it didn't see the ".thunderbird" folder (which was present, but with a different name), so it produced a new one as though it were executing for the very first time. I believe the same occurred with Firefox.

Assuming my theory is correct, the solution would require that I delete the newer duplicate folders to restore the previous state. How can this be done?

[DrHu]

Since there don't seem to be many copies ?
delete the copy that has the data you don't want..

If you want to test before deleting, simply move the one(s_ you don't want elsewhere, lets say a new folder on your desktop or under /temp; provided you don't reboot before satisfying yourself that you have the configuration (data) you prefer/want to use..

The fact that encrypted names appeared with the incorrect entries (your theory) means that somehow, you are running the whole desktop or home directory /home under private (encryption control)
--fix you choices for encryption, and maybe you wont get duplicates ? or at least you will be able to enter them (duplicates?) without any problem

[ChadHerman]

Since there don't seem to be many copies ?
The fact that encrypted names appeared with the incorrect entries (your theory) means that somehow, you are running the whole desktop or home directory /home under private (encryption control)
--fix you choices for encryption, and maybe you wont get duplicates ? or at least you will be able to enter them (duplicates?) without any problem

Yes, I neglected to mention that I've got my Home directory encrypted.

I still don't know how I can access either folder duplicate. I'm fairly certain that the data I had is still present - just inaccessable for the moment.