Suddenly TB stops connecting to server

[Kent Slimm]

I have TB on a desktop running Windows 8 and also on a laptop running Windows 7. For no apparent reason the desktop TB stopped connecting to both the incoming and outgoing servers today. (It just hangs, then sends me a "failure to connect" error message, when I try to fetch or send mail.) TB on my laptop is working fine, so the problem clearly isn't with the mail host. Nor is it the account settings, which are the same on both computers. I tried restarting TB, then restarting the computer. No luck. Any suggestions?

[Kent Slimm]

P.S. - Running TB in safe mode didn't help.
- While I do use a security program, that's not the problem here. I say this because (a) I'm not receiving any notifications that it's blocking TB, (b) TB is on a list of trusted programs, and (c) I use the same security program, with the same settings, on my laptop, and TB is running fine there.

[makaiguy]

Firewalls and Antivirus programs

"Checking" the settings in these utilities is often not enough. Many recognize an updated FFox or TBird is not the same program that you have already granted internet permissions to. It's smart enough not to give permission to an unauthorized program, but too stupid to ask you what to about it when the program trying to access the net has the same name as one with permissions. When you check your set up, yep, looks like FFox or TBird has all the permissions it needs, but that's the OLD version. Try deleting all mention of FFox/TBird from the firewall/AV configuration and let the firewall/AV rediscover FFox/TBird the next time you use it.

Also, sometimes automatic updates of these utilities can cause problems as well causing loss of permissions.

And one last point. Depending on the utility, deactivating the firewall/av for testing may just shut down the user interface but still leave the basic utility running in the background.

[Kent Slimm]

I appreciate the reply, but I did just add TB to authorized programs on my security program. And, as I mentioned, I'm using the same program (same version) on my laptop, and it's not interfering with TB there.

[Kent Slimm]

UPDATE: Later the same day, two changes took place spontaneously. First, connection to the SMTP fixed itself, so now I can send mail. Second, instead of showing an error message only when I click "Get messages," the status line on the bottom permanently says "Connected to outlook.office365.com" - and no mail is downloaded. When I restart TB, it says "An error occurred with the POP3 mail server. Mail server outlook.office365.com responded:"

This really has me stumped...