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aehaas · Jul 12, 2011, 01:10 AM

I have AOL service and use Apple Mail. I have a desktop at home, work and a MBP. All work fine but from time to time one of them asks for a password for Mail. A dialog box appears. It may not happen for several days. Or one or two computers ask for the pwrd the same day. Any thoughts. When it asks, the password box is blank in the Mail pref panel. If I enter the pswd Mail may or may not accept it. I tried taking the Mail Offline then back Online but no joy. It is a random event, No Firewall, just Airport connection to either a DSL line at my office or to FIOS cable at home.

aehaas

Big Mac · Jul 12, 2011, 01:46 AM

This problem seems to happen occasionally on about every mail client I've used. You could try switching to a different client like Thunderbird, but it may just be a server-side problem.

besson3c · Jul 12, 2011, 01:47 AM

Does it do this with a different email client?

aehaas · Jul 12, 2011, 07:51 AM

I also have an account with Apple's me.com. It Very rarely does this, maybe once a month. But the AOL side does this daily. I can have my MBP next to my desktop, both on to mail and only one has this problem, the other is fine. Then later that day or tomorrow, both are bad or just the desktop.

aehaas

angelmb · Jul 12, 2011, 09:52 AM

It happens to me with both, a gmail account and the AOL account, not on a daily basis though.

You can always give AOL Desktop app a try. I know, I know… but hey, it finally got a new icon !!

Doc HM · Jul 12, 2011, 11:21 AM

I think this is due to mail.app not being specific enough with errors. If the mail server is in any way tardy with a reply to the username password, rather than saying that the server has not responded mail assumes that the password was incorrect.

Once the mail servers response time picks up again mail is happy.

Waragainstsleep · Jul 12, 2011, 12:31 PM

You'll find that mail often returns errors like this without appearing to actually try to send or receive anything. When it does this, I try to change something in the account settings, quit, relaunch, change it back relaunch and then test. It just seems to need a kick up the ass every so often. That said I very rarely get this problem any more. It was bordering on pandemic once upon a time.

BLAZE_MkIV · Jul 12, 2011, 04:50 PM

I had this with my hotmail account, turns out turning the check from 5min to 10min fixed it.

besson3c · Jul 12, 2011, 04:56 PM

Originally Posted by BLAZE_MkIV

I had this with my hotmail account, turns out turning the check from 5min to 10min fixed it.

This is a good suggestion. AOL might be rejecting some of the connection attempts because OS X Mail and iOS devices initiate connections like a petulant child, against spec.

ralphdaily · Jul 12, 2011, 06:05 PM

@aolmail tweeted the following this morning "You may be unable to log into your AOL Mail account right now. We're hard at work on resolving this!" If you use twitter, I'd recommend following @aolmail.

Normally this problem (mail.app and other third party mail apps repeatedly asking for password) is AOL side. It can apply to some users but not others. I rarely have the problem, although I did today, my wife has it more frequently. In the old days AOL mail was very reliable, now, not so much. I guess it's AOL's money problems and frequent reorganizations taking a toll. I would go somewhere else but hate to change the email address I've had for many years.

Sosa · Jul 12, 2011, 06:24 PM

I have the same issue with Comcast mail. It frequently asks that I reenter my Comcast mail password. I thought something was wrong my Keys file, because it always happens when I restart the computer. It happens infrequently otherwise. But I agree it is probably a network issue with your mail host.

besson3c · Jul 12, 2011, 06:27 PM

Basically, OS X Mail's error messages should not be taken at face value... Possible causes:

- clock skew
- lack of network connectivity
- connection refusal due to too many attempts

moshu · Jul 12, 2011, 07:57 PM

https://discussions.apple.com/thread...readID=1662481

angelmb · Jul 13, 2011, 01:43 AM

Originally Posted by BLAZE_MkIV

I had this with my hotmail account, turns out turning the check from 5min to 10min fixed it.

Hum, I don't have the 10min option but 15min.

aehaas · Jul 13, 2011, 04:03 PM

I tried the solution of changing the "check mail" interval from 5 to 15 minutes on one computer.
On another computer I changed only the Keychain from "limited to" to "all applications" as suggested by moshu's reference.
On a third computer I did both. I have no control with no changes. This is bad because I have not had the issue (thus far). Do each of these two solutions work by themselves or did AOL fix something??

aehaas

Waragainstsleep · Jul 13, 2011, 04:10 PM

I maintain that sometimes changing something seems to force it to save settings properly and hence fixes the issue.