Connection refused since Windows 7 upgrade

[Nazgulled]

Hi,

I never had such Thunderbird problems while using Windows Vista but now, on Windows 7, I always get "connection refused" message.

I did a clean install of Windows 7 (no upgrade from Vista) and also a clean Thunderbird install. I then moved my old profile to the new location and when I tried to get my mail, bam, "connection refused". I'm behind a proxy and some accounts can work without the proxy and they do work, but if I enable the proxy for those that need it, I get "connection refused".

What can possibly be so different in Windows 7 that Thunderbird is having problems connecting through a proxy?

Any ideas how to fix this?

[DanRaisch]

"The connection was refused" means you successfully made a tcp-ip connection to the mail server and it deliberately broke the connection because it didn't like how you were connected. Typically this occurs if it expected you to use SSL and you didn't.

I suggest you double check your settings to see if something changed them, and verify that you can still login to your account using a browser to eliminate it being a problem with your the account or the password for that account and not with Thunderbird.

An anti-virus or firewall can also cause connection problems. What security software are you running?

[Nazgulled]

"The connection was refused" means you successfully made a tcp-ip connection to the mail server and it deliberately broke the connection because it didn't like how you were connected. Typically this occurs if it expected you to use SSL and you didn't.

Yes, they must be accessed through SSL and I'm sure I have the proper settings.

I suggest you double check your settings to see if something changed them, and verify that you can still login to your account using a browser to eliminate it being a problem with your the account or the password for that account and not with Thunderbird.

Yes, I can login through a browser just fine.

An anti-virus or firewall can also cause connection problems. What security software are you running?

I have Windows Firewall and Security Center services turned off and I'm using ESET Smart Security which I also tried to turn off, they weren't the culprit.

I think I've found the cause but I'm still confused why this is happening... I'm using a local proxy server and that's the server I use in Thunderbird, Firefox and other apps. This local server is supposed to chain with a real proxy when I'm using the universities wifi connection and do a direct connection when I'm at home, I just have to switch profiles. This way, I don't have to bother enabling/disabling proxy server on all my internet apps.

I tried some different configuration with that local proxy server and I made it work. I always used "localhost" as proxy server and it's currently working on Firefox but not on Thunderbird. I made the proxy server also listen on a different IP, the one I'm using for my home ethernet connection, "192.168.1.103", and used that instead of "localhost" on Thunderbird. I can now read my e-mail...

But this is not a solution I'm happy with, this IP may change, the "localhost/127.0.0.1" doesn't. And the "localhost" one works fine on Firefox, Internet Explorer, RSSOwl, every other application where I'm using. It only fails on Thunderbird, which was working on Vista but not on Windows 7.

[Nazgulled]

A little update...

This is weird, changed it to 127.0.0.2 and it worked, changed it back to 127.0.0.1 and it also worked... But localhost is still not working though, any idea why since it works on Firefox?

[DanRaisch]

No, for some reason Thunderbird is apparently not converting the name to the numeric URL, but I don't know why that would be.

[Nazgulled]

I just checked the Windows hosts file and is a bit different from what you used to be on Vista. It now has the localhost entry commented, see this:
http://serverfault.com/questions/4689/w ... itself-why

I just don't understand why IE, Firefox and others were able to understand "localhost" where Thunderbird wasn't...