email account not working on my laptop
Please would you help me? My Thunderbird email has stopped working on my laptop. I had 2 accounts which both worked ok until a few days ago. Now they have both stopped. I have deleted both and tried to reinstall them and also uninstalled Thunderbird but no luck! I can access both accounts perfectly on my ipad and iphone but not on my laptop which makes it seem as though the server is working ok. I have read through the community and tried lots of suggestions but still no luck. I am getting an error message about SMTP as follows:
Sending of message failed. The message could not be sent because connecting to SMTP server mail.(email).com failed. The server may be unavailable or is refusing SMTP connections. Please verify that your SMTP server settings are correct and try again, or contact the server administrator
some details (amended slightly for security) account 2 is deleted. It was account 7 I was trying to use, though not sure why its called that. Thanks!
Mail and News Accounts ID Incoming server Outgoing servers Name Connection security Authentication method Name Connection security Authentication method Default? account2 (none) Local Folders None Normal password account7 (pop3) mail.(email).com:110 STARTTLS Normal password mail.(email).com:25 SSL/TLS Normal password true
All Replies (10)
mail.(email).com:25 SSL/TLS Normal password true
Trying to use SSL/TLS on port 25 would be my guess. Generally port 25 is an insecure port.
Compare the settings between Thunderbird and the devices that you have working. Make the needed changes.
You blocked the mail server names out, like the mail server name is a security risk ???, so there is no way of knowing who your provider is and what the correct setting might be.
Modified by user01229325
Thanks for your reply. My settings are supposed to be:
Incoming Server: mail.(email).com IMAP Port: 143 POP3 Port: 110
Outgoing Server: mail.(email).com SMTP Port: 25 However on my iphone the settings are: Incoming: 'Use SSL' is off. Authentication is set as 'password' port 143
Outgoing: Use SSL is on, authentication: 'password' port 587
On my laptop the settings are on POP3 and I can't see how to change this whereas on my iphone the incoming setting is IMAP Thanks!
POP and IMAP are incoming protocols and would have nothing to so with sending. Using POP does not sync an account when using multiple devices to manage your email. Here is how to switch the computer.https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/switch-pop-imap-account The SMTP settings are for sending. If you are having problems sending that is what you need to address.
The account neither receives nor sends messages. I tried switching POP to IMAP and using settings similar to iphone settings but it still gave error messages. The last of which was that either the email or the password were incorrect. Interestingly when the server account box appears the server host name does not have mail. as a prefix. Should it? I have added it though and this doesn't help.
It should have whatever your provider named their server. You would type in the correct name on the server settings page.
Make sure your firewall is s not blocking Thunderbird. It should be set to Allow or similar.
Hi Airmail, I have checked firewalls and ticked access as you recommend. It is still not working. Could you recommend another email service please as I really need to be able to access emails from my laptop?
Many thanks for your help.
If you can not post the full server names then we can not check and verify that the settings are correct.
Port 25 has been a server to server port for about a decade. The normal SMTP submission port is 587. Port 465 is also sometimes used for SSL/Start/TLS encrypted communications. Sure there are some old implementation out there and some poorly configured mail servers as well. But without the server name we have no hope.
Note here that the mail server name is a public record. Any server trying to send mail to your email address will query Domain Name Services for the MX (Mail Exchanger) record and that MUST contain the mail server or a connection can not occur. If you gave the domain we could check what is set as the MX record and answer your question about what the server name should be and if it contains the word mail.
Please be aware. Unless you know the correct server name and port as well as connection security no mail client is going to work. They mostly have the capacity to guess as Thunderbird does, but guessing apparently does not work in this case or you would have a working mail account.
Mail client such as Thunderbird and Outlook must match the settings set by the mail server administrator exactly to get mail. it does not work the other way, and while there are standards and accepted use, there is no internet police to tell the mail server administrator what they can and can not do. Like your port 25. It is wrong, but in this case it might be correct.
Thanks Matt. It was working fine so obviously the settings were both recognisable and correct. Any reason why it would stop working? Seems strange that iphone and ipad are working fine i.e. are both receiving and sending mail.
Mail servers do change settings from time to time. When they do you have to make the adjustments to keep working.
Your settings are allover the place. You are using POP on some devices and IMAP on others. Your ports do not match as best we can guess since you refuse to post your actual troubleshooting info without editing important info like complete server names that are public record. When and if you decide to post your troubleshooting info without hiding needed details then you might get a solution. As long as you DO NOT check the box to include account names there is nothing that is a security risk.
it does not appear strange to me.
Most mail in the IS world is managed by apps from the mail provider. They don't actually do "mail" hey do web browsing and pretend it is mail.
It is exactly the same as web mail. It is not mail is is a web page and uses none of the ports or protocols a true mail client does.
About all web mail proves is you know your password, and even that "can" differ. Hotmail used to limit the length of mail client password, but not those used on their web site. So passwords that worked in their web mail did not work in Thunderbird.
Sure the settings were fine, are they now? as I pointed out we have to match the servers settings. There is nothing stopping the server setting being changed by the admin, Comcast have just done it and changed the ports to ones their customer ADSL modem blocked.
None of the apple devices will have anti virus programs or firewalls. Your laptop has both.
The usual causes for accounts that have worked in the past stopping are. (not in any order)
- Mail server is down.
- Mail server settings have been changed by the provider.
- SSL V3 is being used for the connection and Thunderbird no longer supports it as a broken protocol
- Anti virus firewall blocking Thunderbird because it has updated to a new version, say 31.5.0 to 31.6.0. Nortons appear to be particularly fond of this, but it might just be a reflection on the installed base.
- Anti virus mail scanner has swallowed it's tough and choked and died.
The first is usually check on a status page with the provider. The second by asking the provider what the correct settings are and comparing them to those your using. SSL goto the error console on the tools menu (alt+T) clear it and press shift+F5 to get all mail. Check the error that appear.
The final list can all be texted by rebooting the machine in safe mode. see http://windows.microsoft.com/en-au/windows/start-computer-safe-mode#start-computer-safe-mode=windows-7 for starting windows in safe mode.
But can we just have the server name... or as Airmail said, (I got an email while writing this) the account settings from the troubleshooting information..