2063513 - Thunderbird 153.03esr and release edition 153.03 give "Unable to validate imap.gmail.com notification on startup

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 2063816

(Thunderbird :: Untriaged, defect)

Description

[herboraninvlammen]

User Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64; rv:153.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/153.0

Steps to reproduce:

Start Thunderbird from icon

Actual results:

After double-clicking the TB icon, Windows gives a TB notification stating that "Thunderbird cannot validate imap.gmail.com."

The notification is IMMEDIATE and shows even before the TB window shows.

It will continue to give this notification through the session, but I can find nothing wrong, I can immediately downgrade to 140esr via restore, and the problem is immediately gone. Upgrade to 153.03 and the problem is back.

Expected results:

It should start, and check my email.
Note that this did not happen until the 153.03esr update. It also occurs in the 153.03 standard release. Tried on two different windows 11 PCs with latest version of TB with the same results.

Comment 1

[Max Emig [:maxe]]

Any kind of 3rd party security software or MITM firewall involved?

Comment 2

[Anje]

the wording of error is important.
Title says "Unable to validate imap.gmail.com" Later you mention error "Thunderbird cannot validate imap.gmail.com."
You mention "Windows gives a TB notification"

What anti-virus are you using?
Have you enabled a VPN?

Could you please upload an Image of error as it may be helpful.
At top of this bug report there is a section 'Attachments' expand to get 'Attach new file' button.

Comment 3

[Nico D.]

The exact wording is what will decide this, so the screenshot would help a lot. There is a other way to get the text, and it also tells us which part of Thunderbird produced the message.

Thunderbird has two kinds of notification that name a server and can pop up right at startup:

1. A connection or login problem, for example "Authentication failure while connecting to server imap.gmail.com."
2. A certificate problem. Those always contain the word "certificate", for example "The certificate for imap.gmail.com does not come from a trusted source."

Only the first kind is also recorded in the Activity Manager. So please:

• Open Tools -> Activity Manager (or the application menu -> Tools -> Activity Manager).
• Look for a warning entry with your Gmail account name.

If the message is in there, please copy it exactly as it appears. That alone already tells us it is not a certificate problem.

A few more things that would help:

• Which language is your Thunderbird running in? If it is not English, please quote the message in the original language rather than translating it. We search for the exact wording in the source code, and a translation back into English usually does not match anything.
• While the notifications keep appearing, does the Gmail account still receive mail? All of it, none of it, or only sometimes?
• Do your other accounts keep working normally at the same time?
• Press Ctrl+Shift+J to open the Error Console, then let the notification happen again. Is there a line that starts with "An error occurred connecting to imap.gmail.com:"? If yes, please copy the whole line, including the code at the end.

On the firewall and VPN questions in comment 1 and comment 2: worth ruling out, but neither of the two messages above involves a firewall or a VPN, and the fact that 140 works on the same machine, on the same network, minutes later, points somewhere else.

One more note. Bug 2063816 describes a very similar situation: Gmail over IMAP on Windows, fine on 140 ESR, problems right after the upgrade to 153 ESR, the notification "Authentication failure while connecting to server imap.gmail.com." appearing again and again during a session. If your message turns out to be that one, this report is most likely a duplicate of it.

Comment 4

[herboraninvlammen]

Then it is a duplicate, because that is exactly what is happening. Over and over and over and over. Loss of email; inability to save drafts; inability to send or receive gmail messages... almost complete loss of gmail services in Thunderbird.

153.1.0esr and standard release are almost impossible to use with Gmail right now.

Right now, Thunderbird is basically useless until this is resolved.