Recently in Thunderbird Category

After seemingly losing my Master Password for the second time when running Thunderbird on Windows XP, I didn't reset the MP like I did the last time.

Instead, I turned the box off. This morning, I turned it back on and started Thunderbird. I tried my Master Password. It worked.

So rebooting made everything right with Thunderbird.

I feel better already. What's the use of a Master Password if it gets irretrievably scrambled every time Thunderbird crashes. Not that I like Thunderbird to be crashing at all, but that's another matter.

For the moment, my faith is restored in Thunderbird in general and in mail clients in particular. Mail — particularly in multiple accounts — is much easier to deal with in a stand-alone mail client.

I have two IMAP accounts under Thunderbird, plus a bunch of local folders into which I'm stashing various messages in an attempt to bring some kind of logic and order to my mail, and it's working.

As long as Thunderbird is working, it's working, anyway.

Remember the last time Thunderbird killed my Master Password?

It happened again.

This time I know a little bit more about what led the Mozilla mail client to screw up so badly. (I'm running Windows XP, in case you want to know).

I was moving some mail into a folder — lately I've been moving all my mail into one folder or another, trying to keep the inbox clear.

Thunderbird appeared to be crashing. My mail wasn't going into the proper folder, I got a message when I tried to do something else in Thunderbird to the effect that "the Inbox folder is locked."

So I ctrl-alt-deleted to get the task manager, then quit out of Thunderbird.

When I restarted it, my Master Password wouldn't work. Yep, just like the last time.

Luckily, as I also found out the last time this happened, there is a fix

But what good is a Master Password — or Thunderbird, for that matter — if I keep having to forcibly reset the damn thing every time the mail client crashes.

And why in the hell is Thunderbird crashing so much, anyway? Should I be blaming Thunderbird or XP?

Clearly this is going to require a little more digging.

I hate to be down on Thunderbird, which I use as my default mail client in Windows XP. But today I turn on the box, start Thunderbird, and things don't go well.

Since I have two IMAP accounts plus local folders set up in Thunderbird, I use the "Master Password" feature so I don't have to enter passwords for each of my accounts, and I figure I'm adding some measure of security that way.

I type in my Master Password when prompted.

It doesn't work.

I type it in about 10 more times.

Still nothing.

So I try to CHANGE or get rid of the Master Password. It seems that you can't do that without knowing the Master Password in the first place.

Are my local folders locked forever? Will I have to completely reinstall Thunderbird?

Answers: No and no.

It is possible to remove the Master Password without knowing it:

If you have lost or forgotten your Master Password or you want to disable the feature, you can reset your master password. Upon resetting, you will lose all the stored information in the Password Manager as this is a built-in security feature to prevent people from simply resetting your Master Password to gaining access to your passwords.

Thunderbird 2: Choose Tools - Error Console, paste the expression: openDialog("chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul") and press the Evaluate button. That will open a dialog asking you if you want to reset your password.

Sure enough, that worked. I reset my Master Password, but I'm still in the dark as to why Thunderbird broke in the first place.