Thunderbird cannot fetch emails

Which email provider? IMAP or POP?

Tools > Developer Tools > Developer Toolbox

you'll get a separate popup that you need to permit as an incoming connection

In the top rightish corner, enable errors/warnings/info/logs/debug

Tell TB to get messages, see if any helpful hints appear in the toolbox window ...

Pretty normal for Windows, nothing to do with TB, mine has 1300 of that event in the past 24h

Couple of probably unrelated issues here:

(1) The fan running all the time. Start up Task Manager and see if there is anything hogging the CPU. Also perhaps get an add on like Core Temp and see if this shows unusually high temperatures. I had issues recently which were resolved by replacing the thermal paste between the CPU and the heat sink.

(2) I have a long standing problem with Thunderbird where it is unable to send to one of my BT email accounts. It can pick mail up fine but can't send. I haven't bothered to chase this in depth because I have another email client which can do this fine. So this may be the BT mail server having a sulk. Or not.

Cheers

Dave R

It's a 2011 Novatech M/B upgrade so that might be an issue. I'll check to see if it needs some fresh grease.

I use BT for email and since upgrading to Tbird 115 I have noticed that if I do not immediately enter my email passwords, Tbird seems to just make an email request from BT without waiting for me to enter passwords, and then I see the same sort of error message.

Go into TB's saved passwords list, delete everything related to BT, get TB to retrieve email, enter username and password when prompted, make sure to tick the "remember" box, that should be it ... should just work in future ...

Most email providers no longer allow email clients to connect to their servers unless it is explicitly enabled using SSL or other encrypted connection.

Older versions of Thunderbird have issues over providing the necessary means of sharing login credentials.

Is it possible there is a 2FA challenge being hidden from you ? I had to create an application password in my Hotmail account to allow apps like TBird to use IMAP.

If you have an app password has it expired or been revoked ? Or has your email provider changed the scope for permissions and require you to generate a new one (favorite trick of Googles) ?

My only saved password is for eternal-september.

For a few days now it seems to get stuck on "host contacted, sending login information...", then many minutes later, including after a message about "no new messages" a banner appears saying "login failed, retry, enter new pwd, cancel".

Even if I ignore the initial request for email passwords (which I never store), Tbird seems to contact my email provider anyway (presumably with a blank password).

No, not that I am aware of. I thought I used POP. When something 'works', don't fix it by changing anything.

No

No idea. What does this mean ?.

If TBird has your password for E-S then that is what it will use. The "login failed" just indicates that the E-S login server isn't working. If, like me you have TBird set to look for messages every N minutes (whatever you have set it to) then it will keep trying at that interval, and if you leave it running, eventually when E-S has sorted out its problem you will get the mew messages come through.

Don't do anything with the banner. I just click on the X and it disappears. Provided you don't change your password it will eventually sort itself out. My longest ever wait for E-S to fix its login problem was 3 days. Normally it is less than that.

CAUTION: I am running the latest ESR version of TBird, because they don't seem to mess up that one accidentally. Your version if different may not behave the same as mine.

Jim

I'm sure other people will be along to contradict this comment. The saved password is for NG access only, and nothing to do with my email provider.

I don't have any problems with NG access !

No contradiction; the E-S password will only be used for E-S.

Just to check, you *want* it to prompt for your email password every time, instead of remembering it?

Sounds like it. I only store email passwords on my desktop machine at home, not on my laptop. TB passwords are easy to recover if you know where to find them.

If you set a master password and use TLS?

Correct. I prefer to enter them every time, so that they are 'at the front' of my queue of things I have to remember and use regularly.

Today, it seems to be back to normal.