Problem with Hotmail account password...

[softfoot]

I have 2 Hotmail accounts and they have always worked flawlessly with TB (I am on the latest revision), but today all of a sudden POP3 complains "invalid username/password" on one of the accounts.

The settings between the accounts are basically identical.

I am still able to login from Firefox and an Android app into BOTH accounts.

I have reset the password on the failing account and am able to access the account from Firefox/Android but it still fails for TB!

I have checked that the stored password is correct and as far as I can see/remember nothing has been changed.

I have run out of ideas and I am

Any ideas/suggestions very welcome.
Regards,
Dave

[tanstaafl]

Check that "allow less secure apps to login" is still enabled for Thunderbird in your hotmail webmail settings (using a browser).

[softfoot]

I was unable to find that setting in the webmail browser interface.
Dave

[tom333]

Check that "allow less secure apps to login" is still enabled for Thunderbird in your hotmail webmail settings (using a browser).

I believe you are thinking about gmail.

I have the same problem. A Hotmail address works fine, a Outlook one doesn't. Refresh the app password made no difference.

[softfoot]

I have two hotmail.com accounts, but both show as Outlook on the web interface.
For the past several years both have worked in TB but as of today one works fine but the other suffers login failures and both have the same basic settings.
Both are OK via the web interface, and both are OK via Android apps.
I suspect that something has changed at the server end, unless a recent TB update has broken something??
Dave

BTW I am running TB under Win7 64bit

[tanstaafl]

"I believe you are thinking about gmail."
You're right, my mistake.

My IMAP Outlook account using outlook.office365.com works fine with TB 78.6.0 and 78.6.1 (both sending and receiving) under Windows 10 64-bit.

If you get a hard connection failure once you are able to connect again to the server Thunderbird has a habit of always returning a login error despite having the correct username/password. Try deleting the saved password for the hotmail account you can't login to, exiting Thunderbird (since the deleted password is still in memory), restarting Thunderbird and entering the password when prompted (along with checking the checkbox to save it). That will workaround that type of problem.

If that doesn't help just to be sure check in the "mail -> sync email" part of the webmail settings that POP support is still enabled. Mine isn't and says "Access disabled" rather than listing the server settings. Its not unheard of for the wrong error message to be displayed.

[softfoot]

None of that helped

I even tried disabling POP retrying with TB and reenabling POP - nothing helped

Regards,
Dave

[tom333]

Receiving not working for me still, although sending emails through the broken account works fine.

[tanstaafl]

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1319903 describes a similar problem that was traced to ESET . I've lost track of its status but a couple of weeks ago ESET was causing problems with any account that used a secure connection. See Waynes post in https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1316142 if you're using ESET.

What AV scanner or Internet security are you using?

[softfoot]

I dont have "ESet" - and the problem doesnt sound quite the same.
For me when I try to download emails it reports "Unknown User name or bad password"
And I would have expected both accounts to be affected if it were due to something like antivirus.
Dave

FWIW I disabled my anti-virus package but the situation remains the same - one account works the other fails.

If it was the AV or firewall I would expect both accounts to be affected.

[tom333]

I use Avast and disabling it makes no difference.

[tanstaafl]

"A Hotmail address works fine, a Outlook one doesn't."

Did the android app use a POP or IMAP account? If it uses IMAP I wonder if this is a hotmail POP specific problem caused by some recent changes on the server. You can have both a POP and a IMAP account for the same email address/mailbox in Thunderbird. You could add a hotmail IMAP account and see if it works.

See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Go_back_to_an ... hunderbird if you want to try to duplicate the problem using version 60 or 68 and a new profile. If there is a bug in Thunderbird they will pay more attention to a bug report that narrows down where/when the bug was introduced.

"I am on the latest revision"
Is that 78.6.0 or 78.6.1? The latter was first offered on January 11. If you're using 78.6.1 I suggest you go back to 78.6.0 (install in the same directory so that you don't have problems reusing the same profile).

[tom333]

I tried rolling back to 78.6.0 last night but it made no difference. I haven't had chance to check any other version.

There are some posts with similar problems elsewhere on the Net. I suspect MS have changed something on some of their servers but not all.

[softfoot]

I didn't think TB supported IMAP ??? Is it possible ??

Where can I downloas 78.6.0 ???

I found 78.6.0 and tried it - the problem remains

Dave

[tanstaafl]

"I didn't think TB supported IMAP ??? Is it possible ??"

Huh? Thunderbird has supported IMAP accounts for as long as I can remember. The issue used to be that many email providers (especially ISPs) didn't provide IMAP support until Gmail's support made it popular.

Nowadays the issue is usually not whether a email provider supports IMAP, its whether the IMAP server supports SSL/TLS (secure connection), OAuth2 (a authentication method), IDLE (server can notify client of new mail without it having to poll) or version 4.1 of the IMAP RFC (are they industry standard or not).