I made a decent living programming in assembly language, so I am not utterly stupid. However, I have aged beyond any understanding of these modern systems.
My main compu… (funda kabanzi)
I made a decent living programming in assembly language, so I am not utterly stupid. However, I have aged beyond any understanding of these modern systems.
My main computer suffered a fatal crash, and so I broke out this laptop that has not seen service during the coronavirus pandemic. I did not have it written it down, so it is only by memory that I can claim it was running Thunderbird 26-point-something. Both machines are on Win 7.
Oddly, the system claimed that Thunderbird was "up-to-date", and that the machine was "on the release scheme". Knowing that my other Thunderbird installation was at 78.11.0, and putting aside the fact that I would have expected the laptop to auto-update the way the main machine regularly did, I went ahead and installed the 78.11.0, assuming that I would be bringing the laptop up to where the main machine must have been.
Whereupon Thunderbird refused to fetch my email without my supplying password(s) to the server, of all things. The laptop was able to fetch email before I "upgraded" it, so obviously it had any needed passwords tucked away somewhere.
I have not had to think of email-server passwords for perhaps 10 years, so that was a shocker and a complete blocker. It would have been helpful if Thunderbird had warned that the "upgrade" would impose some new, unexplained, password protocol. That is, if Thunderbird is in fact at fault here. Could this somehow be Comcast’s problem?
Comcast allows one to use 7 email addresses, and I use them all on the main machine, but only 3 on the laptop. I have two, written-down, passwords for Comcast, but only one of them works, the one that applies to 2 of the 3 in-service addresses.
The missing password applies to my main address, so I am in serious trouble here.
In days of yore, while idly exploring, I have seen some pages showing Thunderbird passwords, but cannot find any such now. I would have expected them to be shown under “Account Settings/Server Settings”, but they are not there. Would it do me any good if they were accessible? If they were thus available, wouldn’t Thunderbird just apply them? And how did Thunderbird ever lose them in the 1st place?
Although I now have restored, if limited, access with the one working password that I have, Thunderbird is making things difficult by repeatedly insisting that I frequently re-enter that same password. It happened again, just minutes ago, so I have a fresh example. I put in the password, this time checking “Use Password Manager to remember your password”, put the machine to “sleep” in order to attend to other matters, and upon return find Thunderbird again demanding the same password. I would guess that I have entered that password 15 times so far during this one day.
The wording of the “Use Password Manager” message is a little odd, but in any case it doesn’t in fact seem to remember anything.
Can I revert to an earlier version, perhaps as far back as 26? That seems like a desperate move, and it probably won’t work, but anyone can see why I would be tempted to give it a try. Before the main machine gave up, I had taken all the many offered Thunderbird updates. I have no record of the final version installed, but can say that it came sometime after Thunderbird changed to having a “CC” tab above and somewhat to the right of the email address block. Before that mod, one had to change the block(s) to the left of the address lines, which defaulted to “cc”, “bcc”, &c.
I am assuming through all this that this new password behavior is due to Thunderbird. It seems implausible that Comcast would change their behavior at exactly the same time that all these other troubles descended. If it is in fact Comcast’s problem, then it will remain severe since their system appears impenetrable from the outside.
