You need to specify MORE information before anyone can advise. Maybe if you post complete error message, we may have an idea of whatever is the concern. Thank you.

Require a password to open thunderbird: if Thunderbird is not currently running, such as after a reboot require a password to launch Thunderbird so anyone who reboots my computer cannot launch Thunderbird. Even better, Thunderbird closes after a specified time period and a password is required to relaunch the app.

No error message.

Is this a question or a command? If a question, the answer is, 'this not a feature available in Thunderbird.' Seems to me it would be something the operating system would control, and indeed, you can force most or all OSs to require a password upon boot-up or after a timeout period.

If this is a command, you'd be better off making making it here:

https://connect.mozilla.org/