Can you access the account online? If so, then post a screenshot of your smtp server and incoming server settings. If it's a password issue and you don't know the password (which you imply in your post), then the solution is to ask earthlink to let you access your account so you can reset the password.

Thanks a lot for replying.

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I know my password. I can log in online. My account settings are ok, I think. At least earthlink thinks they are. Security Settings STARTTLS, Encrypted Password, port 143, imap.earthlink.net.

Outgoing smtpauth.earthlink.net, port 587, Encrypted password, Connection Security, tried both None and STARTTLS.

One other thing is I don't save my passwords in Thunderbird. I've been doing that successfully for years.

Thanks again.

(...) Yesterday they sent me an email saying that my password had been updated but I hadn't done that. After that I haven't been able to connect via Thunderbird.

Well, the email could be not genuine, but if you can't connect anymore, it seems that the password has well and truly been changed. Yet you connect online. This is not clear, is your provider using application passwords or did you setup your Thunderbird account with your main password, the one you use to log online ? You can check it on your existing Thunderbird password in the password manager.

Thanks for replying.

I have not been using the password manager in Thunderbird. I have always entered my password outside of Thunderbird.

I also don't have a password to get into Thunderbird if that is what you are saying.

I, too, thought that the email might not be genuine so I called them. They said that my password no longer met their standards and they forced me to change it. I couldn't log in before I changed it nor afterwards and until I got that email, I could always log in. Further, I was receiving email until about the time that I received that email.

One of the screenshots that I attached shows the error message that appears after I try to log in several times.

hmm, very strange that they could evaluate the quality of your password, servers are not supposed to *know* the users passwords, only a hash. Maybe they were using unsafe hashes like MD5 and they had an audit.

Anyway, you entered a new password, and it allows you to enter the web interface of your mail provider and you can see your mails in the webmail of your provider, but the same password does not allow you to connect using Thunderbird, that's it ? if yes, did you check that at the same time your provider did not change something in the mail client requirements, such as changing the way the user name should be entered, from user_name to user_name@provider or the reverse ? can you try that ?

The problem resolved itself. I logged in to webmail, changed my password yet again, & logged out. I logged back into webmail with my new password, then tried to log in with Thunderbird, it failed, hit retry and it worked and has continued to retrieve email for 10 hours or so.

Thanks for your help.

Actually, there still may be an issue there. After 3/4 hours more Thunderbird crashed and I couldn't log back because I was getting the same error. But after re-entering my password again, it worked.