Join the AMA (Ask Me Anything) with the Firefox leadership team to celebrate Firefox 20th anniversary and discuss Firefox’s future on Mozilla Connect. Mark your calendar on Thursday, November 14, 18:00 - 20:00 UTC!

This site will have limited functionality while we undergo maintenance to improve your experience. If an article doesn't solve your issue and you want to ask a question, we have our support community waiting to help you at @FirefoxSupport on Twitter and/r/firefox on Reddit.

Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

Thunderbird server timeout issue

  • 2 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 2 views
  • Last reply by sfhowes

more options

We have not changed any of our settings or email accounts yet suddenly both accounts in Thunderbird will cause a "connection to server timed out" error. I have checked the outgoing and incoming mail server settings and the names and port numbers are correct and so are the username and password entries. What might be causing this all of a sudden? The email accounts have been working fine for months and then suddenly last week we started getting this error. I have also tried increasing the value for the IMAP timeout in config.editor but it did not help.

We have not changed any of our settings or email accounts yet suddenly both accounts in Thunderbird will cause a "connection to server timed out" error. I have checked the outgoing and incoming mail server settings and the names and port numbers are correct and so are the username and password entries. What might be causing this all of a sudden? The email accounts have been working fine for months and then suddenly last week we started getting this error. I have also tried increasing the value for the IMAP timeout in config.editor but it did not help.

All Replies (2)

more options

Could be changes on the provider's side. Who is your email service provider?

more options

Run in Windows safe mode to test if a startup app, such as antivirus, is causing the timeout. When either the app or TB updates, they can become incompatible and cause timeouts. What is the AV app, and is the TB profile folder excluded from AV scans?