TB 38.5 Saved Passwords won't fully delete

[BretMan]

I was forced by AT&T to upgrade from DSL to their fiber optic Uverse internet and email recently. This means I have to update all my email accounts from the former @bellsouth.net to @att.net. After backing up my old bellsouth related TB profile, I believe I've successfully updated my primary and 10 sub-accounts to att.net settings, including at the att.net site's account profile. This also includes the local Pop server port and SMTP port and settings.

My problem is making the TB connection to the att server. I've removed/deleted all the passwords from the Saved Passwords list, then closed TB and even rebooted - several times. When I then open TB it asks for whatever passwords and I enter them. After a few are submitted they all soon produce the fail pop-up. This happens for both email accounts and inbound and outbound. When I check the Saved Passwords list, some of what are newly listed are the old bellsouth info. I've done this many times and they stubbornly keep coming back and won't fully delete. It seems to me that the connection fails are because TB is trying to connect with the old settings instead of the new ones. Is there some backup file TB creates or the like that I should delete? If so where is it?

Please advise.

Thank you

[DanRaisch]

You can close Thunderbird and delete the files signons.sqlite and key3.db.

[makaiguy]

FWIW - Starting this afternoon I've been unable to send email to bellsouth.com addresses (I'm in a bellsouth area and although I don't have a bellsouth account, many of my correspondents do). I just get failure messages saying "retry timeout exceeded". Messages from the bulletin board I administer at tugbbs.com are having tbe same problem.

Further when I try to ping bellsouth.net that times out too.

I suspect all of bellsouth.net email (and maybe alll of att as well?) may be down.

[BretMan]

DanRaisch: I first backed up the current new profile and also created a restore point. I then did as you said and deleted the signons.sqlite and key3 Data Base files for TB, found in TB>Profiles>1dyd17se.default folder. The Win Expl. search also found those same files in the Firefox folder but I left those alone. Upon opening TB it then proceeded to ask for the passwords for the NEW email accounts and the NEW inbound account. After a few were entered thay all came back as failed again. I checked the Saved Passwords list and again the related but OLD info was again listed, still resurrecting. That OLD info. must still be lurking somewhere. I removed them all from the Saved Passwords and closed it and TB. I searched again for signons.sqlite and neither it nor key3 were listed in the TB folder.

Out of curiosity, the FF key3 file showed Date Modified 1/16/2018 , 910am 16kb. This coincides with when I opened FF to read your reply post earlier this morning. I don't use any passwords with FF itself or use its password manager to login to sites I visit. Should I try deleting the FF signons.sqlite and key3 files too? My guess is the OLD info is still somewhere in some file which is being accessed still. Or could they be somewhere else? Please advise.

makaiguy: I'm not sure we have the exact same situation but as for me, AT&T switched from Yahoo to another company to handle their emails a few months ago. Yahoo was handling my old bellsouth emails for years after the service before it - I think it was AT&T. My bellsouth emails were all made to not allow sending a few weeks ago by AT&T when they forced me to upgrade, but I still received messages ok. You may try logging into your Yahoo.com email accounts with your bellsouth email as user ID plus password. You should still be at least receiving messages but I'm not sure if you can send from those accounts anymore, even via the yahoo.com webmail. I think those accounts will not shut down and as for me, I still need to add my new email addresses to yahoo to forward to, to keep receiving messages sent to my old email addresses, after I get my current issues fixed.

[DanRaisch]

Should I try deleting the FF signons.sqlite and key3 files too? My guess is the OLD info is still somewhere in some file which is being accessed still.

No, don't do that. Firefox and Thunderbird do not share log-in information. Even if you were logging into the web mail pages for those accounts using Firefox, it would not share the passwords or user ID info with Thunderbird.

This is confusing because deleting the two files I identified above removed all of your email passwords from the profile. There should have been no data to bring back when you next log in.

I think there may be an element of the problem in the way you switched to the "new" email accounts. If I'm properly interpreting what you said in your first post, you changed the settings in the existing accounts in Thunderbird to match AT&T's requirements for the Uverse addresses. The proper way to deal with the change would have been to ADD new accounts to Thunderbird using the settings appropriate for the Uverse email access. You might still want to do that to get around this log-in issue.

How are the accounts set up in Thunderbird, as POP or IMAP? Find out using menu path Tools->Account Settings->Server Settings->Server Type at the top right of the dialogue.

[BretMan]

Ok, I won't touch the FF files. Yes it is odd they still persist. When the passwords are removed/deleted from the Saved Passwords list, where to the deletions go? I assume the deleted files go to the recycle bin (just checked and that's where they are now). Could they be re-accessed somehow from the recycle bin?

It's POP.

Correct, I didn't create new TB accounts for the new email accounts. I merely modified the existing accounts with the updating new information. However each account now has no visible traces of the old info.

[DanRaisch]

Could they be re-accessed somehow from the recycle bin?

No. That's not possible.

However each account now has no visible traces of the old info.

Well, except for the mysteriously reappearing old passwords, assuming that IS what's happening when you get the failure message. What is the exact text of that error message?

[BretMan]

With the old setup, when I opened TB I would always first get the request: "Please enter master password for the Software Security device." I'd enter the password and any new email would start to be received. Every once in a long while I may then get a request for the password for a specific email account. After that, once that password was entered and with the "Remember the password .." option selected, it would work ok.

Now, with the Saved Passwords list deleted beforehand, when I open TB I'll first get the password request for and email address then after that the request for the Master Password then for another email account (should be asking for the Master password first always, no?). Soon after I'll get the fail pop-up for the inbound which states "Sending of password for user (my user name) did not succeed. Mail server inbound .att.net responded: Server error - Please try again later". Then the email connection pop-up fails follow. In each of these cases the fail pop-ups include the reference to the new info. After the fails, when I check the Saved Passwords list, what's listed is the old related info., not the new info. I just entered.

I'd rather find and delete the resurrecting old info., but to I'm falling behind on work so I'm wondering if I should try to restore the old profile from the backup I did, then add the new accounts as you suggested. If you think I should, I backed up just the profile without the emails with Mozbackup. If I restore just the profile will it revert my existing profile and not effect my existing emails?

[DanRaisch]

First, that error refers to a server error. Have you reconfirmed that the settings for the ATT accounts are exactly as required? That is, do you have the full email address entered for username? Is port 995 selected? What is selected for "Connection Security" and for "Authentication method"?

You should probably clear the master password at this point and add it back later if you wish. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Master_passwo ... r_password

[BretMan]

Ok ... many hours later, I've since discovered there are 3 entities involved. ATT.com (where the internet/email account/s are paid for and initially set up), ATT.net (where the email accounts are shown) and Yahoo.com (which is the email's online access site "webmail"). Each one of those has to be set up and via Yahoo.com, each email account has to be authenticated to work and they are officially working when a confirmation is emailed to the accounts. So, Yahoo is still the email provider for AT&T and they haven't made the switch yet to the other service yet. All my new email accounts are now created in TB and authenticated with my having received the confirmations for all of them to the webmail and to TB. When I open TB and enter the master password, all the account's passwords are accepted now. Success! - sort of ...

Now my problem is that none of my TB accounts will send messages. I get the following TB pop-ups when I send an email: It first states "Connect to outbound.att.net ...: then "Connected to outbound.att.net..." then "An error occurred when sending mail. The mail server responded: Request failed; Mailbox unavailable. Please verify that your email address is correct in your account settings and try again." This has been consistent for two days now. I looked up the error message and it suggests that either my firewall or antivirus may be to problem. TB isn't listed to be blocked and besides the connection to outbound.att.net is being made. The addresses and ports are correct too.

Please advise.

[BretMan]

I didn't hear back from anyone but I finally figured out the problem after having to call ATT tech support, which is always a lengthy ordeal. They checked my accounts and found nothing wrong. I discovered they have not switched to the new email service provider and still are using Yahoo. Messages sent from my accounts directly via Yahoo.com, without TB, also don't work (send). ATT apparently has no interest in continuing to spend time and money to support customers with email issues while still with Yahoo. That's why I got a 2yr 20% discount, to put up with this. At some future date they will make the email service provider switch. The tech agreed with me.

My solution has been to switch to Outlook.com email. Once I got the first account working in TB, the next ones seem to mostly auto generate if "Create a new account" is selected from and already working outlook in TB email account - just have to adjust the email address name. One remaining issue is TB has been slow to send or needs a couple re-trys for the Outlook accounts. Once a message is sent successfully via TB I noticed there are two copies of the one email message in the sent folder. I suspect this duplication is what's slowing it down. How do I get TB to not so this duplication?

[DanRaisch]

How did you set up the Outlook account in Thunderbird, as a POP or IMAP account?

[BretMan]

IMAP

[DanRaisch]

I believe that's an anomaly of Outlooks implementation of IMAP accounts. In Thunderbird, use menu path Tools->Account Settings->Copies & Folders->uncheck the option to "Place a copy in:". Outlook will still store a copy in the server Sent folder which will be accessible to you in Thunderbird or view webmail.

[BretMan]

Success! I made your recommended change to all my new outlook.com email addr. in TB and it's only copying one messg. to the Sent folder now. Although, I don't understand why since I've now deselected TB to save any copies at all - but I'm not complaining.

Reliable Sending of Outlook addr. messages has been elusive. It can be very slow to connect to the server and finalize sending. It will usually fail and I try again and 50% of the time the second try will work. If not I save it to the Drafts folder, then try again from there, and it usually will send then. If not, if I close and re-open TB it will send it the first try and sometimes quickly. I've thought this issue may have to do with the duplicate copy problem but fixing that isn't having any effect. I've wondered it there may be too much server activity at certain times of the day but it's happening now, Sunday morning - likely not a high use time period.