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Can't log into 2 of 5 email accounts.

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  • Last reply by Mikey

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Have used Thunderbird as my default mail client for many years. I have 2 gmail & 3 AOL accounts under Thunderbird. Upgraded November 1st to version 60.3.0 (32-bit) and I'm thinking this is when the trouble started. I began getting a Window saying login failed & requesting a new login password. I'd just click on Cancel and everything continued to work. The last week 3 of the 5 accounts wouldn't receive emails. Re-setting all 5 passwords helped to get 1 more to work but I still have 1 gmail & 1 AOL account not logging in (below).

Login to account “elnora09@gmail.com” failed Login to server imap.googlemail.com with username elnora09@gmail.com failed. Retry Enter New Password Cancel

Login to account “EMSBob@Aol.com” failed Login to server imap.Aol.com with username EMSBob@Aol.com failed. Retry Enter New Password Cancel

Old or new passwords don't work.

   Logged onto:  Gmail.com and could access Elnora09 with no problems.  
                          AOL.com and could access EMSBob with no problems.  

Attempted Cures

  • Restarted with ad-ons disabled & same result.
  • Rebooted in Safe Mode & same result.
  • Per Mozilla web site instructions: Blocked Thunderbird in Norton Security, same results.
                                                               Re-approved Thunderbird & same results.  


Please Help. Regards, Robert.

Have used Thunderbird as my default mail client for many years. I have 2 gmail & 3 AOL accounts under Thunderbird. Upgraded November 1st to version 60.3.0 (32-bit) and I'm thinking this is when the trouble started. I began getting a Window saying login failed & requesting a new login password. I'd just click on Cancel and everything continued to work. The last week 3 of the 5 accounts wouldn't receive emails. Re-setting all 5 passwords helped to get 1 more to work but I still have 1 gmail & 1 AOL account not logging in (below). ***** Login to account “elnora09@gmail.com” failed Login to server imap.googlemail.com with username elnora09@gmail.com failed. Retry Enter New Password Cancel Login to account “EMSBob@Aol.com” failed Login to server imap.Aol.com with username EMSBob@Aol.com failed. Retry Enter New Password Cancel ***** Old or new passwords don't work. Logged onto: Gmail.com and could access Elnora09 with no problems. AOL.com and could access EMSBob with no problems. Attempted Cures * Restarted with ad-ons disabled & same result. * Rebooted in Safe Mode & same result. * Per Mozilla web site instructions: Blocked Thunderbird in Norton Security, same results. Re-approved Thunderbird & same results. Please Help. Regards, Robert.

Chosen solution

I'm trying to make TBird work with POP on AOL. I've used the same email credentials since the dawn of time, but logging in to AOL became hit-or-miss a couple months ago. Today, it's consistent -- I get either a "server error" or "server timeout" message.

Current POP AOL settings, according to https://help.aol.com/articles/verizon-move-to-aol-mail-updating-your-third-party-email-program-or-mobile-device-with-your-new-account-information-pop3, are:

Incoming mail server (POP3): pop.verizon.net POP3-995-SSL Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.verizon.net SMTP-465-SSL

I've set up TBird that way, and set AOL settings to use low security, but my TBird logins are rejected. This has been intermittent for the last few months, but I could eventually get logged in by logging on to AOL webmail (same credentials as used in TBird) and restarting TBird, but today nothing works.

I spent about 40 minutes trying to find someone in Verizon who had a clue, but finally gave up. Now I'm going to try AOL "support", but I'm not optimistic.

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Don't know if this is relevant, but... even when things worked before, establishing the POP connection took a long time -- like 15 seconds or more.

Now, after changing network.dns.disableIPv6 value to True, the connection has never failed, and it's nearly instantaneous.

Also possibly irrelevant, but FWIW, my ISP is CenturyLink.

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Another potentially smoking gun pointed at DNS: my email address is in the gte.net domain. GTE became Verizon, and Verizon became AOL, but through all that I was able to keep the gte.net address. My wife has a computer more-or-less identical to mine, on the same LAN, also running Thunderbird for her email client. She also has a Verizon account, but it's in the verizon.net domain. She has never had this problem.

Mine is working today, very fast connections.

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