This laptop seemed to have a problem sending emails via Mozilla Thunderbird.

Since the customer knew very little about computers, she had many “helping hands” try to fix her problem (and one who probably caused the problem in the first place!).

Anyway, its easy to assume that most settings are correct, since receiving emails works.

After some research, and checking the settings, I find that to access the hotmail account, I need to setup the outgoing server like so:

server: smtp.live.com

port: 587

SSL/TLS encryption

Authentication: normal password (ie don’t encrypt the password)

I try sending emails again, but I keep getting:

The connection to SMTP server smtp.live.com was lost in the middle of the transaction.

So, I’m starting to wonder whats wrong with Thunderbird, or whats wrong with live.com…

But I soon find that its actually a problem with Thunderbird remembering saved passwords.

Although I wasn’t told, it seems that the customer had changed her email password (or someone had changed it for her).

But thunderbird kept using the old password.

So how do you change thunderbirds saved passwords?

Simple, from the main thunderbird window:

tools -> options -> security -> passwords -> saved passwords -> show passwords -> yes -> highlight the smtp entry with the old password -> remove -> close and get out of the options screen -> restart thunderbird

Now, when you try to send an email, you will be prompted to enter the password… and you can once again tell thunderbird to remember it…