Some issues like 'not responding' might be caused by external startup apps, especially antivirus. Run Windows in safe mode to test this, as startup apps are bypassed).

Open Address Book with Ctrl+Shift+B or Spaces toolbar. Or, Contacts sidebar, F9 in Write window.

Check Outlook settings, and use OAuth2 with Comcast (supported in 115 and 128). VPN, if in use, might account for persistent authentication prompts.

For nstmp, see this article.

Finally, if your current profile is based on the one created 20 years ago, a new one is recommended (Help/Troubleshooting Info, about:profiles). Old profiles contain files that e.g. block password saving.

Oauth2 for Comcast account authentication ... tried it ... seemed broken. "Host contacted sending login info" stays up forever; sent myself a test message which never arrived until I switched back to "Normal password". I would note that Comcast says it supports "Oauth" ... no mention of Oauth2 ... might be significant.

If I do not enter the Outlook password, the UI shows a tumbler (a blue bar where the shading moves left to right and back to the left) in the lower right hand corner,

One thing I failed to mention is that - as soon as I start TBird - Windows Task Manager shows two tasks (1) Comcast inbox and (2) just says Thunderbird

I am very reluctant to disable startup as I would lose Microsoft Antimalware, which really does not chew up much of the I5's capacity. And I rarely get to 70% memory utilization, so I do not think any paging is going on.

On the question of the profile files .. some years ago (5!?) a then-updated Thunderbird would not start and I "updated" the profile file (if I recall, I just deleted lines in the file until it worked, and it has seem to work fine until recently). Until the recent batch of authentication errors, it remembered passwords flawlessly. Let me know if there is some other procedure that can be applied.

Let me clarify the address book issue; I have not been able to isolate the triggering circumstances, but when it happens: i) while authoring an e-mail, there is no response to entering - into the "to" text box - the beginning text of an e-mail, ii) attempts to open the address book (by either the menu bar item or cntl-sh-B) brings up the display of an empty address book.

If you prefer not to test by temporarily disabling startup apps, by running in safe mode, at the very least add the TB profile folder as an exception or exclusion to whatever AV apps are running.

I don't know what effect your 'update' of the profile involved, but there's nothing to lose, and possibly a lot to gain, by testing with a new profile. The current profile would be unaffected.

It appears your address book is corrupted in some way, so I suggest testing with a new one in the new profile, with a few contacts added to test address autocomplete. If it works properly, you can try exporting the address book in the old profile and importing to the new one.

The weekend came, so I had some time to try to "create a new profile". Tried some stuff, realized that I had no idea of how to get Tbird to generate something fresh - without losing hundreds of historical contacts and tens of thousands of historical e-mails. So let me explain, with the hope that there are some explicit instructions available.

1. Looking at ...\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\profiles.ini

has references to different storage areas. The currently selected one (which was created for reasons and those reason still exist) looks like <network share>\TBirdDad which has Mail subfolder prefs.js, etc.

2. I use the troubleshooting tab in Tbird a new profile in <network share>\TBirdDad. Tbird made an entry in profiles.ini but touched nothing in <network share>\TBirdDad nor did it create any new files. I am assuming this behavior is "by design".

3. I speculate that the intended "make a new profile" thing intends construction of a new folder in ...\AppData\Roaming\Thunderbird\Profiles, but I have no idea as to how to trigger that behavior ... I imagine it is not specifying a folder locations in the "new profile" dialog.

4. Even assuming that last phrase (above) is accurate, and I could authenticate to the mail servers, are there any instructions for (i) grafting in existing e-mails and data from 20 address books, and (ii) moving new prefs.js and other!? relevant files to <network share>\TBirdDad?

My apologies for the length of this and thanks in advance.

Jonathan

You can move the profile location by using Profile Manager or about:profiles:

http://kb.mozillazine.org/Moving_your_profile_folder_-_Thunderbird

The two default address books, abook.sqlite and history.sqlite can be copied from the old profile to the new one, with TB closed. Other address books such as abook-1.sqlite or impab.sqlite can be imported from Tools/Import.

Local mail from the old profile can be transferred to the new one by copying mbox files - large files with no extension, named after folders - in Mail/<popservername>, Mail/Local Folders, and sbd subdirectories, to Mail/Local Folders in the new profile.

I wouldn't recommend copying pref.js. Just add the accounts in the new profile.

I created a new profile, got authenticated, fixed several display settings, imported addresses books, brought in the historical Local Folders. Everything in new Profile folders has 2024 dates in it.

But I still have the same issues. On startup, the outlook account authenticates and downloads anything new. After some number of minutes (often 10 or more), I get prompted to login again and - whether or not I do - the bad behavior comes back - cannot access address books, need to reauthenticate to the Comcast account.

If you have any other thoughts (I suspect you will not have many), I would love to hear them. And thanks again for helping me "tilt at this windmill"

Jonathan

I don't experience repeated authentication prompts with my hotmail account. If you use a VPN, that might be the cause, also for the Comcast account. I still think running Windows in safe mode, temporarily, is necessary to rule out (or in) external app interference.

I don't know what 'cannot access address books' means, or if having the profile in a non-default location is a factor in any of these issues. The multitude of problems suggests a flawed Windows setup, as few if any users report all of these things happening at once.

Issues had seemed to have gone away, but came back.

Let me recount the recent history for what it is worth ...

1) I created a new network share pointed to by a new profile entry 2) Opened Tbird on laptop (Windows 11), set up Comcast and Outlook e-mail accounts - note that all the files in the recreated Profile directory had 2024 creation dates. 3) Laptop seemed perfectly stable for a few hours (including - I think - sending and receiving e-mails through the Comcast account) 4) Then I started having the issues (nags to login to a server already authenticated, T-bird "tumbler" going on forever, forgetting saved passwords, inaccessible address book) on the laptop. 5) I noticed that the Comcast SMTP settings had gotten changed - not by me - to Oauth2 and port 587, which is not something Comcast supports 6) I fixed the Comcast SMTP settings, restarted and it has worked fine for hours. 7) In lieu of starting the laptop in Safe Mode (an not-obvious process, and requires the 48-decimal-digit BitLocker key), I successfully opened Tbird on my desktop unit (Windows 10), which access the profile directory via a "local drive" - maybe that is relevant!? (and obviously - used the desktop unit when the laptop was not using TBird). 8) The laptop seemed stable, but reverted to bad behavior 24 hours later. Specifically the round tumbler appeared while entering the text for a new e-mail. Tbird was unresponsive; task manager showed only 1% CPU usage, other applications were responsive to keyboard input. I waited a minute, clicked the "x" in the top bar of the Tbird window. Eventually Tbird closed. - Now it has been a while since I have programmed Windows message queue processing, but I think that means Tbird issued a "Wait Event" system call for something that was never going to happen, so Tbird could not process incoming posts to its message queue. The "x" in the upper right-hand corner just puts a "Close" request in the message queue, and after a short time with no pulls from the message queue, the OS deallocates related task resources.

And, just for the sake of a "complete record" 1) Laptop is only running Windows Defender (and not any of the usual anti-virus culprits - McAfee or Norton) 2) When it was happening, address book failure looks like (i) autocomplete suggests nothing and (ii) Ctl-shft-B or menu item click brings up address book dialog with no entries

Thanks Jonathan