Thunderbird won't download emails anymore

[Arxane]

A recent problem has developed with my copy of Thunderbird. Usually it would work absolutely perfectly, but recently it's decided to stop working at all when it comes to downloading my emails from my email accounts onto my hard drive. Whenever I start the program or ask it to "Get Mail", it only gets up to "Connected to [insert email server]" and doesn't get any farther before giving up.

Is there a reason why it's decided to just give up like this? The email servers are fine, as far as I can tell - I can access my email through the webpages easily. Just as a side note, I am using AVG anti-virus software, and AVG does scan all my emails (at least when it worked). Also, I don't recall doing anything to Thunderbird before it started acting up like this.

Any help is appreciated, thanks.

[DanRaisch]

How recently have you compacted your message folders? This action is a necessary part of using Thunderbird and other email programs. Messages "deleted" from the Inbox, Sent, Draft and other folders or moved from one folder to another are not really removed from the original folder (file) until that folder is compacted. See this URL for additional information on the subject - http://kb.mozillazine.org/Compacting_folders

[To compact the Inbox, its best to be offline. (File->Offline->Work Offline). This is due to the potential for file corruption if messages are received automatically while compacting is in progress. Click on the Inbox folder title in the folder pane and then right click. In the resulting context menu select "Compact this folder".]

Also see this URL - http://kb.mozillazine.org/Keep_it_worki ... derbird%29