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Level 1

4 points

repeated requests for password

New problem with Mail, one I've had before and never been able to figure out how to really resolve it. Very often now, a dialog box pops up with this message:

Enter password for Account “Primary”

The POP server “pop.att.yahoo.com” rejected the password for user “---”

Please re-enter your password, or cancel.

I put the password in, click on "save in keychain" and then a piece or two of mail comes in, but very soon, the same dialog box pops up again. What's going on here?

Thanks,
Judy

iMac G5 20" 1.8 GHz, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Mar 17, 2011 7:27 AM

19 replies

Mar 27, 2011 6:45 AM in response to Sulimo

Same here. The email problems (so far) seem to have stopped. Let's hope they stay that way.

Judith Anne Author

Level 1

4 points

Mar 27, 2011 7:52 AM in response to Renee Clark

Well, interesting. I've just been busy with other things, and haven't been checking in; interesting how many others have had the problem, how many things have been tried (and maybe worked, maybe not), etc. As of now, the password request thing has stopped, but sometimes when I click on "send," after writing a new email, I'm informed the message can't be sent and will be in the outbox. When I open and send again, it usually goes on the first try. Sheesh.

So...my current thinking is, if it ain't broke, I won't try to fix it (re the password thing). As for the send problem...if it doesn't get worse, it's tolerable, since it's intermittent. Sounds like way too much work to try to figure out what's wrong without it being a bigger problem.

I surely do appreciate all your comments and ideas. Certainly sounds like an ATT problem; maybe when they've accumulated enough complaints, they "fix" it (for awhile). Guess there are things we are not meant to understand...

Thanks again, all!

Judy

Jun 7, 2011 11:48 PM in response to Judith Anne

My keychain has a couple of user-first email client authentication certificates. I suppose AT&T-Yahoo SMTP and POP servers have to turn to another server to see if certificates are valid. If the server is busy, I wonder if that could cause the POP server to reject the password. That could explain why for me the problem comes and goes, and the second try always works.

ELCG

Level 1

12 points

Jul 22, 2011 10:27 AM in response to Stephen Throop

I do believe it does have something to do with overloaded servers because its intermittent and we have the same problem at work. I only started having this problem when ATT(bellsouth) changed over to yahoo about 1.5 yrs ago. Had a total email mess that I had to spend hours straightening out. Seems that they did the changeover in stages which caused continual problems down here in South Carolina. Never had problems when they used google. Haven't found a solution yet. We are in the process of deleting our att email altogether and just using gmail. Of course, when you call for help with this, after 3 transfers and 2 hours att points the finger at mac or yahoo...XP

repeated requests for password