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Compuserve email account and Thunderbird

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 4 views
  • Last reply by sfhowes

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From another archived post:

I have Tbird on two machines, home (Win 7) and work (WinXP). This works fine on the Win7 machine. On the WinXP machine, I get "The IMAP server imap.compuserve.com does not support the selected authentication method. Please change the 'Authentication method in the Account Settings | Server settings'".

In 'Server settings' The server name is 'imap.aol.com'. I don't see 'imap.compuserve.com' anywhere.

What to do?

From another archived post: <I think you want to use your compuserve address on the AOL servers pop.aol.com and smtp.aol.com, but use OAuth2 authentication for the incoming and outgoing, instead of normal password. Change the server names and authentication, delete the passwords in Options/Security/Passwords/Saved Passwords, check that cookies are enabled in TB Options/Privacy, then restart TB and enter the regular account password in the OAuth browser window when prompted. > I have Tbird on two machines, home (Win 7) and work (WinXP). This works fine on the Win7 machine. On the WinXP machine, I get "The IMAP server imap.compuserve.com does not support the selected authentication method. Please change the 'Authentication method in the Account Settings | Server settings'". In 'Server settings' The server name is 'imap.aol.com'. I don't see 'imap.compuserve.com' anywhere. What to do?
Attached screenshots

All Replies (3)

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AOL now uses OAuth2 authentication, which is not supported in the last version of TB for XP (TB 52). If you're restricted to normal password authentication, I think you will have to remove the account password from TB in Options, restart TB, and enter an app password that is created on the AOL site.

https://help.aol.com/articles/Create-and-manage-app-password

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I've tried that. Seems like it doesn't want to go to the imap.aol.com ... it tries to go the imap.compuserve.com.

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Compuserve uses the AOL servers, which would work with OAuth2 in a modern version of TB, but you will have to use normal password and an app password. There shouldn't be any references to compuserve.com servers if you've changed the settings to aol.com servers, and removed all items from Saved Passwords.

Try it in a new profile if you can't remove the spurious compuserve error. Close TB, open a Run window (Winkey+R), type

thunderbird.exe -p

to start Profile Manager.