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Thunderbird will not accept password because (paraphrasing) it's "in use" or "locked by another session". There is no other session.

  • 3 replies
  • 1 has this problem
  • 9 views
  • Last reply by Matt

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More times than not, almost on a daily basis, I get this message on Thunderbird when I enter my password: Sending of password for user XXXX.com did not succeed. Mail server mail.twc.com responded: [IN-USE] account is locked by another session or for maintenance, try again. It will then give me a window to click on "retry", "enter another password", or "cancel". There is no other session and...what maintenance?! The provider webmail will accept the password. In fact, I changed the password twice on the webmail. It would work for a few days on Thunderbird and then I'd start getting the above error message again. Once in a while, when I can get into Thunderbird, I'd suddenly loose the ability to send/get messages because suddenly the password would apparently be rejected mid session giving me the same "in use" or "locked" error message. Now, I'm having to use the provider webmail (which I really hate) to get my E-mails. Please help! Thank you.

More times than not, almost on a daily basis, I get this message on Thunderbird when I enter my password: Sending of password for user XXXX.com did not succeed. Mail server mail.twc.com responded: [IN-USE] account is locked by another session or for maintenance, try again. It will then give me a window to click on "retry", "enter another password", or "cancel". There is no other session and...what maintenance?! The provider webmail will accept the password. In fact, I changed the password twice on the webmail. It would work for a few days on Thunderbird and then I'd start getting the above error message again. Once in a while, when I can get into Thunderbird, I'd suddenly loose the ability to send/get messages because suddenly the password would apparently be rejected mid session giving me the same "in use" or "locked" error message. Now, I'm having to use the provider webmail (which I really hate) to get my E-mails. Please help! Thank you.

All Replies (3)

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have you tried disabling you anti virus email scanner. That usually fixes most mail issues. Unfortunately most anti virus mail scanners are seriously unnecessary and problematic.

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Thank you for responding, Matt. I thought my question got lost somewhere because it wasn't where I thought I wrote it. Anyway, I don't know that I have an anti-virus scanner. I probably should be embarrassed to say, but I don't even know what that is. However, something happened just now...all my E-mails suddenly downloaded. I went back to try my password again, and there they were. I had not done anything. I think the same thing happened a couple of other times as well. I can't get in for hours and then suddenly, it works. If I didn't know better I'd swear TB was possessed. Can you explain this, Matt. Thank you.

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WE regularly see issues caused by anti virus. We also see them spontaniously fix themselves when they get a new update (every three hours for mine) If you go to Help > troubleshooting information in Thunderbird and scroll down to the heading security software, it will tell you what security software you have.

In my case it shows

Security Software
Type 	Name
Antivirus 	ESET Security
Antispyware 	
Firewall 	Windows Firewall

The other cause of such issues are problems with the mail provider. They are not always up to date on what is happening with their mail servers, and unfortunately most of the ISP help lines have no idea about anything but web mail and they tend to just fob folks off with if web mail is working, mail is working. Nothing is further from the truth, but when you are providing a service for a price under a contract for someone not all that concerned about the quality of service issues often arise.

I see all sorts of issue with lagacy Road runner mail accounts and increasingly with TWC. It might pay you to check your settings in Thunderbird against those suggested by spectrum. Old server names are a frequent cause of trouble. https://www.spectrum.net/support/internet/spectrum-basic-email-troubleshooting/?redirected=true

Spectrum support should be able to confirm I have the correct settings for your account. If TWC folk should be using spectrum account settings is something that I have not been able to clarify. You will need to do that with Spectrum.