it could be that hotmail does not use your password, other than in the initial setup. It could be that Hotmail used cookies and lots of folk follow poor advice from their security software and disable them so the setup does not work without them. In may be you antivirus/malware tool/spn makes setting up an account impossible with it active. What your specific issue is, is really a matter of working through a load of possibilities to determine which actually applies to you. # Do you have an antivirus product other than defender? (Norton sell a product that can almost be expected to cripple the Thunderbird setup wizard a state of affairs they have apparently been happy with for around a decade and several corporate reinventions of the parent company) # Do you have an VPN? These also offer extreme issues with setting up a mail account. Many providers simply block attempts to set up an account while using them as it appears to them you have been hacked. Your phone is in say Islamabad and you VPN says you are in Anchorage. Something they treat as a clue everything is not as it should be. # Can you connect to this web site in a browser. autoconfig.thunderbird.net/v1.1/hotmail.com # Can you connect to the Thunderbird addons website from within Thunderbird? appmenu > addons and themes #Search for import in the search box. Does the ImportExportToolsNG addon appear in the tab with an add to Thunderbird button? All of these things offer clues as to what the issue might be. None of them is a solution because this is something specific to your computer, not mine. I can add a hotmail account without any issues at all.