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andreas_g4 · Apr 20, 2004, 02:21 PM

I have this problem for a while (had it under Jaguar, too), but now it really gets on my nerves: Mail randomly rejects my password for anyone of my five email accounts, ehich are hosted by different providers. All POP3. When this occurs, Mail asks me to re-enter my password for the affected account. The weird thing is, that when I click on the triangle in my mailbox window and quit and restart Mail, everything works fine. It takes only some seconds, but it is just plain bull**** to do this 40 times a day. Can anyone give an advice?

SMacTech · Apr 20, 2004, 02:35 PM

Are you sure you are not being affected by internet outages? Try pinging one of the mail servers and see if there are any dropped packets. This is very similar to what happens when .Mac is temporarily unavailable or times out.

barbarian · 07:07 PM

I had the same problem.

In my case my outgoing mail was being rejected.

It turned out that this didn't have anything to do with Mail. Many of my SMTP servers it turned out were using a kind of authentication that requires you to check your POP server within a certain time interval before you could sent mail using SMTP. So if I sent mail soon after checking (which happens at startup on my machine) no problem, but if I waited a while then it would fail. Note these tended to be email addresses connected to webservers. The solution was to always check mail before sending mail.

My earthlink mail was also having problems. It turned out that this was an earthlink issue. I finally solved this by using an otpion to have secure smtp authentication (smtpauth.earthlink.net = smtp server, account id = your full email, pass = your pass).

Finally I had another account that had simply changed some of it's authentication parameters.

Anyway the moral of the story is read the fine print. It's probably not a problem with Mail. It's probably an issue like the one above or a connection that is dropping.

rm199 · Apr 20, 2004, 03:23 PM

this is definitely a problem with .mac/mail

Some weeks I have the issue, others not. When it happens, at least a couple of times a day it just wont accept the password, however cancelling and rechecking seems to work.

I saw a thread on here with 20 odd people complaining about it

Mithras · Apr 20, 2004, 06:18 PM

Happens to me too, usually when the network is wonky, like when I have marginal Airport reception.
I just click "Cancel" and let it try again later, and it usually works.
Very annoying though.

andreas_g4 · Apr 21, 2004, 09:46 AM

Thanks for all the input, but:

- My Airport reception is always four bars
- The problem occurs with five POP3 accounts that are hosted by three ISPs
- I never have SMTP problems
- Most improtant: It sucks and I want it to go away, so it must be something solvable

The error:

-Q- · Apr 21, 2004, 09:50 AM

It's not just you. There's a whole thread of people who have the problem. Although it seems to appear randomly...

SSharon · Apr 21, 2004, 12:12 PM

At my university I get that error every day at 4am when they restart the mail servers or whatever they are doing. Our mail is down for maybe two minutes but since I have Maill set to check every minute it always catches the servers when they are down. I doubt a place like earthlink or yahoo is using only one server but how often do you have mail set to check?

Jordan · Apr 21, 2004, 05:18 PM

Originally posted by andreas_g4:
Thanks for all the input, but:

- My Airport reception is always four bars
- The problem occurs with five POP3 accounts that are hosted by three ISPs
- I never have SMTP problems
- Most improtant: It sucks and I want it to go away, so it must be something solvable

The error:

You're not alone!!! I too get the same error on other Pop accounts. It seems to happen when I come out of sleep but not always. Quitting and restarting mail fixes it but it is a royal pain in the @$$....

Jordan

Mediaman_12 · 06:02 PM

I think I will chip in with a "me to" (no I don't have .mac or any other sort of smtp mail, this is happening with my regular ISP provided POP3 mail). I thought the last update had fixed it, but alas no.
Yes, it's a royal pain in the ass. It's also what's keeping me from upgrading my mums computer to Panther.

Hay maybe some of the people who are moaning about the .Mac mail service on the above quoted thread have this problem, and are incorrectly blaming the mail server

barbarian · 07:32 PM

(no I don't have .mac or any other sort of smtp mail, this is happening with my regular ISP provided POP3 mail)

Actually if you have a POP3 account, you actually use 2 servers a POP server for incoming mail and an SMTP server for outgoing.

To isolate the SMTP issue check and see if the problem only happens when you are trying to send mail. If so it's an smtp issue.

If the problem happens when you are receiving mail it's a POP issue or of course it could be some obscure Mail bug, but we have scores of people using Mail here (and many using entourage) and each time we have investigated it has been something external.

Mediaman_12 · Apr 22, 2004, 05:00 AM

Originally posted by barbarian:
If the problem happens when you are receiving mail it's a POP issue or of course it could be some obscure Mail bug, but we have scores of people using Mail here (and many using entourage) and each time we have investigated it has been something external.

It is the message displayed in the above post (note it says 'POP Server'). It doesn't do it all the time and then only after about 20 mins, after which it comes up every 5 mins or so. Entering the password in the dialogue makes it go away.
It's as if mails connection with the keychain breaks down after an amount of time.

moonmonkey · Apr 22, 2004, 08:37 AM

Originally posted by andreas_g4:
Thanks for all the input, but:

- My Airport reception is always four bars
- The problem occurs with five POP3 accounts that are hosted by three ISPs
- I never have SMTP problems
- Most improtant: It sucks and I want it to go away, so it must be something solvable

The error:

Same problem here with my Yahoo.

Press cancel, then put the account back online with the "electricity" grey circle next the account name.

JKT · Apr 22, 2004, 09:54 AM

As hinted at in the message above, this is simply a case of a really, really badly worded error message. The problem is not your password at all, it is the connection to the server. You don't have to re-enter your password, you just have to press cancel and then put the account back online.

I strongly recommend everyone sends Apple feedback on this as that error message desperately needs rephrasing.

-Q- · Apr 22, 2004, 10:21 AM

While the error message could be re-worded, it's not limited to Mail. I get a 'could not connect' error consistently in Entourage '04.

southtdi · Apr 22, 2004, 10:43 AM

I get that randomly on my three pop accounts. I have found when it happens that just quitting mail and restarting solves it. Unless it is .mac then i know it's them. Strange problem that I have had since the last revision of Jaguar.

ginoledesma · Apr 22, 2004, 11:43 AM

Hmm... I always thought that when Mail.app reject my passwords, it was because the connection to the mail servers was timing out (which happens several times in my broadband connection). I've noticed two different "error icons," though. One is a little lightning-like icon that indicates the connection to the server timed out (even before authentication), whereas the other one is an exclamation point inside a triangle, indicating that authentication failed. Again, I assumed a connection time out -- which I once verified when I checked my mail logs (server side).

footie · Apr 22, 2004, 10:35 PM

My iMac cannot access one of my ISP accounts. It started today after an Entourage crash.

I get the 'password' failed error.

Same for Apple Mail.

The suggested Apple Mail fixes, quit and put account back online don't work.

Access to comcast accounts remains fine.

What the heck broke?

thanks

barbarian · Apr 23, 2004, 12:16 AM

You can check if there is a problem with your ISP by going to:

http://www.mail2web.com

and grabbing your mail there... if you can't grab it there the problem is with your ISP...

-----------
There's another related issue... some malformed SPAM cause both Mail and Entourage to crash. Way to fix this is to go to mail2web, delete your SPAM and then start mail or entourage again...

Brass · Apr 24, 2004, 12:11 AM

The error is usually caused my Mail not being able to contact the mail server (for whatever reason). Unfortunately, the Mail developers have not trapped the error correctly, and report it as being a rejected password (which is not the case at all).

What mail should do, is put up a dialogue window saying "Couldn't contact mail server" (or similar), and let you click an OK/Cancel/Try Again button, after which it will go away and try again periodically.