[Matt OS X]

I'm using .mac mail app here.. and from time to time it popped a box (Image below) asking me for password, I typed in my password and it repeatedly and it wont accept?


I'm using Airport Extreme Base Station here.. Is that the reason why?? Or?? Am I missing something??? help. thanks

[gorickey]

You may want to repair your Keychain using "Keychain First Aid"...

[wataru]

I get that all the time. It has nothing to do with your connection, as I get it whether on dialup or DSL. Quitting and relaunching Mail.app sometimes fixes it for me.

[CharlesS]

I get that sometimes. Usually it means that the mail server is having a problem - i.e. Mail.app doesn't have much to do with it.

[barney ntd]

I get that from time to time, and I don't use .mac. As Charles says, it means Mail can't get through to your mail server, which means it's usually an internet problem. The best thing to do is click "Cancel", which means that Mail won't check that account again until you either restart it or clear the error. Under Panther, you see a little warning sign in the mailbox pane next to the inbox: click that to clear the error and start checking again.

Barney.

[SMacTech]

I have been getting this too, as of late. However, if I check it again, it will connect. It is .Mac that is having sporadic issues of unavailability. In fact, it just happened 5 minutes ago. Mail.app has nothing to do with the problem.

[sniffer]

Try setting Mail to check for new mail with longer intervals, eg every ten minutes instead of every five minutes. That might do the trick.

[Love Calm Quiet]

Yes, that's a pretty sucky (and dis-informative) message. Yes, it means the server is having a problem.

The last time I got it I decided to access my account via webmail.mac and the message there was "servers are down for maintenance; please try again later." Well, that's annoying, but happens with my other mail accounts occasionally, too.

More unfortunate IMHO is that the error is misleading. Newbies, especially, are not likely to know what to do - and get really frustrated thinking there is a problem with the password. Shall we all file "bug" reports with Apple. This needs re-working.

[brapper]

i got that about ten times yesterday...
i was thinking it was on apple's end...

[JNI]

Originally posted by Matt OS X:
I'm using .mac mail app here.. and from time to time it popped a box (Image below) asking me for password, I typed in my password and it repeatedly and it wont accept?

I'm using Airport Extreme Base Station here.. Is that the reason why?? Or?? Am I missing something??? help. thanks

Apple has acknowledged this recent problem at the mac.com support site. They know the problem is happening frequently as of late and are investigating the cause. They are apologizing, and stating that no mail is being lost, just queued up for eventual delivery.

This kind of thing usually happens when there are excessive loads on the servers, like when they are doing back end administration work with the system, or sometimes they have blamed it on excessive spam during mail virus attacks and such. I haven't seen an explanation yet of the exact cause this time. All we can do is wait for them to straighten it out.

Maybe we'll all get some kind of freebie out of them for all our trouble. That would be a nice gesture. I would like to get a few free e-mail accounts out of it, or maybe they could bump up the default size of the inbox (and address the new 1G email account limits that some other ISPs are starting to offer.)

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by sniffer:
Try setting Mail to check for new mail with longer intervals, eg every ten minutes instead of every five minutes. That might do the trick.

And if I set it to never, I will never have the problem. Ya , that's it.

[philzilla]

ugh, this is one of the most annoying things. ever. somedays, i just have to turn Mail off, because it gets that annoying.

and repairing the keychain doesn't fix it.

[SuperHard]

So far, after using mail app for nearly two years now, I haven't had a single keychain problem with it, since 10.2 and all the upgrades to 10.3.3. However, I don't use .mac, never have - I use an IMAP mail server at work for my email. I connect from within work and from home (on the same computer, currently an Al Book I tote everywhere.) So, since there are many people who never have problems with mail.app, while many others do, it seems most likely the problem arises from the network/mail server side of things. The only problem I had for awhile was sometimes MS Word documents would arrive unopenable - I think it happened when someone sent me an Word document via MS Exchange WebMail, mail.app would jumble it. Eudora, for example would not. That problem is gone - not sure exactly when the fix took place - either at the mail server end, or in a mail update.

All in all, Mail.App is fantastic. It all depends on how good your network admins are. For whatever reason, Apple's .mac mail seems to have a lot of hiccups, and that would be the one place it should work perfectly, I would think! At Princeon U, the networking seems excellent. Similarly, on the networking side, I see lots of complaints on OS X networking on these forums- however, I have no problems mounting any sort of shares at the U; SMB, Windows, Unix, others probably? - it works here on this gigantic network, but that's as a much a credit to proper implementation by the admin guys as it is to OS X. Just my 2-naive cents solely from a user's perspective. It always works. Oh, and I connect wirelessly.

Good luck!

[sniffer]

Originally posted by SMacTech:
And if I set it to never, I will never have the problem. Ya , that's it.

Hehe. Sorry. I had the problem my self with Mail asking for passwords a couple of times a day. I think the mail servers could ignore my request when I had the check for new mail at a to frequent rate. Putting the intervales to around 10-15 minutes seemed to do the trick for me. But I haven't been on broadband for a month now (!!! ) so I am not updated on the .Mac status. (Except for the daily spam I've recived lately that wasn't there earlier.. argh)

[ryju]

It just does it randomly but I haven't had it happen in awhile. I always thought it was a problem with .mac.

[Love Calm Quiet]

philzilla:

I can't imagine why repairing keychain should help - it's not REALLY a password problem. It's a .mac server problem. (beccause it "self-repairs" if you wait long enough)

The aggravating thing is that the error message is FUBAR.

[philzilla]

Originally posted by Love Calm Quiet:
philzilla:

I can't imagine why repairing keychain should help - it's not REALLY a password problem. It's a .mac server problem. (beccause it "self-repairs" if you wait long enough)

The aggravating thing is that the error message is FUBAR.

look above; someone suggested it.

[Diggory Laycock]

It's so annoying -I get "support" calls from my parents all the time telling me that it's asking for their password - So they type in what they think their password is that day (they're not the most tech-savvy) - which of course screws the whole system.

Even if they gets the pass. right - usually the server does not accept it (because it's not behaving properly) - so they thinks that their (correct) password is wrong!

Apple should definitely have a "The server was not happy" dialog - rather than a "You got your password wrong" dialog - which expects a new password - It seems to many users that the computer is telling you that your password is wrong - and it is willing to store any crap you type in there into the keychain.

Bad Mail.app - Bad User Interface.

[SMacTech]

Originally posted by sniffer:
(Except for the daily spam I've recived lately that wasn't there earlier.. argh)

I too have been getting spam in my .Mac account lately, whereas before I didn't get any. Anyone else seeing an increase of spam in their .Mac email?

[theolein]

I get this on occasion too, and with both my different accounts, neither of which are .Mac. Quitting and restarting Mail.app usually does the trick and the closest I've been able to figure out a solution is that it happens when I get a new IP address assigned automatically by my ISP's DHCP server. This happens once every now and again, but usually once every two or three days.

[kovacs]

Originally posted by gorickey:
You may want to repair your Keychain using "Keychain First Aid"...

I did that a couple of times and it seemed to cause more problems than it solved...

[msuper69]

Repairing the keychain won't help.

The problem is with Mail/.mac as my other email accounts don't have the same problem. Apple should change the message to indicate the real problem, as others have said.

Eventually, usually within an hour or so, Mail starts working again, probably after the problem at .mac has been fixed.

[RooneyX]

Originally posted by Matt OS X:
I'm using .mac mail app here.. and from time to time it popped a box (Image below) asking me for password, I typed in my password and it repeatedly and it wont accept?


I'm using Airport Extreme Base Station here.. Is that the reason why?? Or?? Am I missing something??? help. thanks

YA! Und ven mein Airport is disconnecting and not accepting mein passvurd I am extwemely med about it.

[Matt OS X]

After reading all of your messages, I think my problem existed because when I moved my powerbook from direct connection to Airport somtimes.... Maybe that's why it confused the .mac mail app? Just a thought here.

[cszar2001]

I get that too.
Just press "cancel" and a few minutes after that everything works fine again.

[RooneyX]

My stupid mail.app has just started doing it right now. Quiting isn't helping and its not saving the pword.

[Hi I'm Ben]

If it makes you feel better. I get the same thing on outlook 2003.

[dru]

I used to get it. At some point it seemed to be fixed. I think it's just 'one of those things' caused by gremlins, code gnomes or some other critter.

[diamondsw]

Folks, this is not Mail.app. This is not the Keychain. This is dot-mac.

I check the same e-mail accounts on my Windows box at work, and sometimes dot-mac just refuses a particular password for a while, and then it works again. I can check three accounts in a row (on either Mail.app, webmail, or Windows Outlook Express), and one account will just not work, while the other two dot-mac ones are fine.

Apple has some issues with handling their user id's and authentication on the server end, that's all.

[Diggory Laycock]

Originally posted by diamondsw:
Folks, this is not Mail.app. This is not the Keychain. This is dot-mac.

Wrong - I have several accounts - my Vodafone POP account is particularly flaky - every time it's not available I get the "The Server rejected your password" dialog.

It's not dotMac - it's a misleading Dialog.

[juanvaldes]

this is a known mail.app bug. has been around since 10.2 I believe...

[Hi I'm Ben]

I guess someone missed the part when i said my outlook does the same thing?

Both my Outlook and Mail.app have the exact error at the same exact time. But you can keep blamming it on mail..

[Love Calm Quiet]

They "have the same error" because .mac is telling them the same thing.

But we might expect Outlook to give a %$#@# FUBARed diagnostic message.

Let's insist that Apple's Mail app do better !

[ApeInTheShell]

So let me get this straight, you didn't click on the purple question mark button for a better explaination? Think people

[waffffffle]

I have 5 email accounts in Mail.app on 3 different servers. I ONLY get that message with my .Mac account. It happens almost daily and its quite annoying.