Hotmail constantly asking for password

smtp - my pop settings were working; I was receiving, I just could not send. My smtp and pop settings and passwords are now the same.

I have followed up with very helpful second line support at Apple - who referred up to engineering support. I have reinstalled my OS, used previous versions of Mail, experimented with Thunderbird.... I have had no luck resolving it. LIke others in the thread; this problem is fairly recent and the pattern of being asked to re-enter my password is inconsistent. I have just installed GMail and that seems to be stable and will perhaps migrate from hotmail to GMail over time if this problem does not go away. Thanks for tip about automatic updates - I can see migrating from hotmail and then periodically checking hotmail and avoid being annoyed by constant requests to reenter password. Apple support has gone beyond the call of duty to help, seems like one of those things for an unlucky few.

I have 2 GMail accounts. One of them (not the other) intermittently asks for the password and when you type it in you get the message that the password was rejected. I've been just closing the window and waiting for a few hours. When I come back and bring the account back online, I'm prompted for the password and it will usually be accepted on the first try. But then the next day, or maybe only hours later, it hangs up waiting for the password again and the whole cycle begins anew. Since it's reported here to be happening with both Hotmail and GMail accounts, I'm inclined to think it's a Mail issue. This issue occurred several months ago with a previous version of OS X, then spontaneously fixed itself for awhile. Now it's happening again.

Oh dear! I hope I have better luck. My hotmail issue is also more prominent on the macbook than an older mac mini. So this is really difficult to figure out and I suspect unless it was an issue affecting lots of people, it won't get on the software development radar. Are there no great MAC email clients with which one can access all mail accounts?

During the holidays I have had some time and decided to redirect all my hotmail to a newly established gmail account. I no longer open hotmail from within Apple Mail and have removed the Hotmail address from Mail preferences. This is about three of four days now and so far this resolves the problem. I hope that I don't get your issue with gmail; the Apple support people were quite convinced that I should not. I guess if it all goes poorly, I am a mobile me customer and I will just use all Apple - at least I can be more insistent that it sorts out the problem.

The fix is easy and not as complicated as others have described. Go to preferences and general, and change the time interval in which Mail checks your mailboxes for new mail. Change it to 1 hour.

The problem was that if the time interval was too short, the check request would time-out, and hotmail or msn would think its under an attack and request your password to continue. By changing your time interval the problem is avoided.

Saul

oh thank you! 🙂

I finally had email from my Hotmail account forwarded to a new account I set up with a different ISP. Set up the new email in Apple Mail and have had no problems with constantly asking for a password. I will be closing out my Hotmail account.