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Thunderbird on Windows Stopped Receiving Email, and Generates Error When Sending Mail

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  • Last reply by amp88

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Hi all. When I went to bed this morning my Thunderbird installation on Windows was working perfectly, but when I woke up and restarted my PC Thunderbird was unable to download any emails from my Gmail account. It just hangs, with the message in the status bar displaying "<email address>: Connected to imap.gmail.com..." for a few seconds, but never downloads anything.

I also tried sending an email through the same account in Thunderbird, and the message successfully sends, but Thunderbird gives me an error dialog with the message: "Your message was sent but a copy was not placed in your sent folder (Sent Mail) due to network or file access errors. You can retry or save the message locally to Local Folders/Sent Mail-<email address>." If I select the option to save the message locally to Local Folders that appears to work (2 new files called "Sent Mail-<email address>" and "Sent Mail-<email address>.msf" were created in my Thunderbird profile/Mail/Local Folders directory).

I can still receive and send emails perfectly fine using the Gmail client on my phone, and I've checked the status of my Google account, to eliminate that as a potential problem. My data usage on the Google account is well below the limit, and my app permission for Thunderbird on Windows is still saved and working according to the Google dashboard and the fact I can still send emails through Thunderbird on Windows.

The error dialog above suggests the problem is local to my machine, but I don't know how to test that at all. The drive my Thunderbird installation and Profile are on has plenty of free space (~370GB on an M.2 NVMe drive), and when I use the Local Folders save option above that successfully saves Sent Mail to the same drive.

I'm running Windows 10 Pro 64-bit with Thunderbird 78.5.0 (32-bit), and I'd really appreciate any help or advice anyone could give. Thanks.

Hi all. When I went to bed this morning my Thunderbird installation on Windows was working perfectly, but when I woke up and restarted my PC Thunderbird was unable to download any emails from my Gmail account. It just hangs, with the message in the status bar displaying "<email address>: Connected to imap.gmail.com..." for a few seconds, but never downloads anything. I also tried sending an email through the same account in Thunderbird, and the message successfully sends, but Thunderbird gives me an error dialog with the message: "Your message was sent but a copy was not placed in your sent folder (Sent Mail) due to network or file access errors. You can retry or save the message locally to Local Folders/Sent Mail-<email address>." If I select the option to save the message locally to Local Folders that appears to work (2 new files called "Sent Mail-<email address>" and "Sent Mail-<email address>.msf" were created in my Thunderbird profile/Mail/Local Folders directory). I can still receive and send emails perfectly fine using the Gmail client on my phone, and I've checked the status of my Google account, to eliminate that as a potential problem. My data usage on the Google account is well below the limit, and my app permission for Thunderbird on Windows is still saved and working according to the Google dashboard and the fact I can still send emails through Thunderbird on Windows. The error dialog above suggests the problem is local to my machine, but I don't know how to test that at all. The drive my Thunderbird installation and Profile are on has plenty of free space (~370GB on an M.2 NVMe drive), and when I use the Local Folders save option above that successfully saves Sent Mail to the same drive. I'm running Windows 10 Pro 64-bit with Thunderbird 78.5.0 (32-bit), and I'd really appreciate any help or advice anyone could give. Thanks.

Chosen solution

If you are using ESET/NOD32 security/AV then probability is very high it is causing your problems. According to their forums, you should temporarily disable SSL until they solve the problem per https://support.eset.com/en/kb3126-disable-ssl-filtering-in-eset-windows-products?ref=esf - the problem is being reported by dozens of users https://forum.eset.com/topic/26517-problems-with-thunderbird-and-imaps/ https://forum.eset.com/discover/

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Chosen Solution

If you are using ESET/NOD32 security/AV then probability is very high it is causing your problems. According to their forums, you should temporarily disable SSL until they solve the problem per https://support.eset.com/en/kb3126-disable-ssl-filtering-in-eset-windows-products?ref=esf - the problem is being reported by dozens of users https://forum.eset.com/topic/26517-problems-with-thunderbird-and-imaps/ https://forum.eset.com/discover/

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Thanks, that was the solution to the problem.