391090 - generic SMTP "sending of message failed"-error message when sending with a saved but wrong password

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 155172

(Thunderbird :: Message Compose Window, enhancement)

Description

[Henrik Heil]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6
Build Identifier: 3.0a1pre (2007080605)

When you attempt to send with SMTP-Auth with a saved username/password that is no longer valid (because it has been changed on the server) the generic error message is displayed: "Sending of message failed. The message could not be sent because connection to SMTP server xyz timed out. Try again or contact your network administrator."




Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. create account, use name and password in SMTP server settings
2. send mail and save password 
3. change password on the server
4. compose a new mail an try to send
Actual Results:  
The generic error message is displayed -- suggesting a different kind of problem  like network-/server-settings or a server problem in general.

Expected Results:  
Display an error message that explains that a stored username/password have been sent and rejected -- with instructions how to delete/change the old stored password.

Almost no "non-technical" user I know of can resolve this situation on his own and trying to help with the user reading the generic error message to you leads in the wrong direction.

This is related to bug #339972. If for the reasons described in #339972 it is not desirable to ask for a new password and store it while trying to send the message at least the error message should be more specific.

Comment 1

[Mark Banner (:standard8)]

Although the symptoms are slightly different, this bug seems to have the same method to repeat as bug 155172. Therefore marking as a duplicate of that bug.

Reporter, if this is still an issue in Thunderbird 3 beta 2 or later builds, please feel free to reopen explaining the current symptoms.