hi guys !
just my 2 cents worth :
for whatever reason i seem to suffer from the exact same thing - however in my case in Snow Leopard this NEVER happened, soon after i upgraded to Lion, even though i have the same softwares installed & use my iMac in pretty much the same way, it happens quite often & worse :
it can go for 2, 4 or even 7 days WITHOUT happening ONCE & all of a sudden for no apparent reason it happens 5 or 8 ( more ?.. ) times in a row which drives me nuts....
funnily enough, one very distinct thing i AM doing different since i upgraded to Lion is that i started using KeychainAccess actually to AVOID this sort of thing & NOT rely on having a single password for EVERYTHING..
so in an effort to sort it i :
1 - Googled up common problems with Keychain Access, did a troubleshoot/repair, it told me NOTHING was wrong..
2 - deleted all the passwords from Keychain, ran a full Onyx ''maintenance routine'' ( permissions repair, etc, etc.. ) restarted the iMac &....just when i thought i had nailed it....BOOM !!... there comes the pesky little dialog box asking, no ! actually DEMANDING the password a couple of times in a row !?
any suggestions other than what has been written above ? i DO like Mail's way of doing things & would REALLY prefer to keep it/sort it rather than install another program
oh well, i guess one couldn't start a new year without some ''fun'' thing + a bit of mystery going, huh ? ;-)
cheers