Access to Thunderbird suddenly fails

[Geoffers008]

My access to Thunderbird email suddenly failed last night for both my Virgin email addresses (enter new password) and is still down this afternoon.

It's fine for other email accounts such as gmail, and although I have changed my Virgin email password, it's still nothing doing.

It doesn't appear to be a Thunderbird problem, but I wondered if anybody else is having the same problem.

[Graham_A]

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@Geoffers008 wrote:

My access to Thunderbird email suddenly failed last night for both my Virgin email addresses (enter new password) and is still down this afternoon.

It's fine for other email accounts such as gmail, and although I have changed my Virgin email password, it's still nothing doing.

It doesn't appear to be a Thunderbird problem, but I wondered if anybody else is having the same problem.

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@Geoffers008 You mention that you have changed your virgin email password.  Is this the one you use to sign into your My Virgin Media account and webmail for the email account concerned?  Is so then you will not be able to use the new password with Thunderbird or any other email client.  For this you will need to generate an app password via the account settings page of the My Virgin Media account.

VM have recently changed the log in requirements for accessing VM Mail via third party apps.
Email client access now requires an app specific password which can be generated in the MyVM > Account Settings > My Virgin Media Account details > Manage your Virgin Media Mail app password

[Geoffers008]

Thanks, Graham, the new password was indeed a generated one. I only changed it because I thought it might solve the problem, but it didn't.  I can still access webmail, but all my archive stuff is on Thunderbird so it's not ideal!

[coenoby · Accepted solution]

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@Geoffers008 wrote:

My access to Thunderbird email suddenly failed last night for both my Virgin email addresses (enter new password) and is still down this afternoon.

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You can get an idea of why the VM SMTP server is not authenticating correctly by running a Curl command.

To do that:

1) Copy the following line of command text and then paste it into a MS Word document (or which ever text editor you prefer)  so that you can edit it.

curl -v smtps://smtp.virginmedia.com -u username:password

2) Once you have pasted it into Word, replace"username" with your full Virgin Media address,  and   "password" with your latest VM mail app password.  So that part should now say something like     "youremail@virginmedia.com:word-word-word-word"      It is important to keep the colon  :  and the spaces  exactly as per the original line of text in step 1).

3) Type cmd into the Windows 10 or 11 search bar, press Enter and then open the Command Prompt app.

4) Copy the full line of text that you just amended in step 2) from the Word document and paste it where the cursor is blinking in the Command Prompt. Then press Enter.

That will generate several lines of output but all you need to look for towards the end of the output is either:

235 2.7.0 SMTP350 Authentication successful            - which means that your laptop can successfully access and authenticate with the VM server even if Thunderbird  cannot.

Or an error message such

535 5.7.8 Authentication Credentials Invalid (VM300) 

Post back here to say either that authentication was successful or, if not, just post the error message line as per the example above. Don't post the full output from the Curl command. It is the VM3NN code that is the key information.

Coenoby

[Geoffers008]

Thanks, Coenoby, I've only just seen this but fortunately Thunderbird resumed normal operations late last night. No idea how or why, it just suddenly worked again!  I have noted your suggestion should this arise again.