thunderbird keeps forgetting my email account passwords
I have 10 email accounts I have to monitor. When I set up Thunderbird on Windows, I entered all the account info and the passwords. I checked the box 'use password manager'. This worked well for a few days. After several days, I started the app again and it asked for every password again. I entered all the passwords again. This happened several more times. I sought help for the bug, but found none. Someone suggested deleting password database files in the Thunderbird data folders. This did not help. Someone else suggested that CCleaner may be deleting password data files, so I added the entire Thunderbird data folder to the scanner exclusion list. Yes, this may be a security risk, but I need this app to work, as I have not found any other app that even begins to get the job done. Ready to start looking for another email app now, unless someone can fix this problem. It is not reasonable to expect me to lookup and restore 10 passwords every time I check my mail.
All Replies (7)
Try changing a simple setting. Any setting. Then exit and restart and see if the change is still there. My guess is that something is preventing thunderbird from shutting down properly, causing whatever change is made to not be there on restart. It could be an antivirus or VPN or something else. You might also click help>troubleshootinginformation, scroll to 'profile folder' click 'open folder' and then see if the profile has more than one prefs.js file, such as prefs-1.js.
Interesting. I have the same problem. I have deleted the files in the profile folder as instructed by on-line search results, to no avail. Looking just now, I see that I have prefs.s and prefs-1.js through prefs-16.js. All the number prefs files have modified dates of some time in the past (ranging from 2015 to 2024). The prefs.js has today's date. Should I delete all the old ones? Hank
YES. They represent problems you had in the past.
Sounds like the is files are old log files despite the misleading extension. How would deleting old log files improve the password storage bug?
tkirby2605, did you check for prefs files? Hank18's may be different. My earlier suggestion was to assist you.
no other settings being forgotten. only passwords. one prefs.js file, today's date and current time. this was one of the files some earlier attempt at a solution asked me to delete. It has since been recreated by tb I assume. Leaving the app open and running seems to put the problem off. I would run ccleaner to test that as the cause, but I need my emails to work today.
Okay, it was a hunch of mine that it might be the prefs.js as others have had similar problems tied to that. Maybe someone else has suggestion.
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