Thunderbird IMAP just timing out

Downloaded Thunderbird and set it up to use IMAP with my dreamhost account. However, for some reason no matter what I do I cannot get Thunderbird to actually connect with my Dreamhost email account. Every time I try to connect:

- I see "Connecting to mail.mydomain.com" in the status bar
- I get an alert box after a few minutes with the message "Connection to server mail.mydomain.com timed out"

I've checked and rechecked all the settings I've input for my Dreamhost IMAP account and no matter what I do it simply will not connect. I've tried my primary alias for username, my actual system username, disabling my firewall (BlackICE), specifically opening port 143 on my firewall to all traffic, etc., but nothing seems to help.

Does anyone know what I might be having a problem and getting constant time outs when attemtpting to connect with my Dreamhost account?

Thanks,
Rick

Forget it, I think I found the problem. It seems someone instituted a network level firewall or something and specifically blocked port 143 (among others). I'm assuming this is the reason...

-rt

I get the same result but with just Thunderbird...

With Outlook I can connect to the mail server via IMAP...but I would like to use Thunderbird...

EDIT: Nevermind...had an issue with my proxy...feel like not so smart now... :)

In reply to:

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Downloaded Thunderbird and set it up to use IMAP with my dreamhost account. However, for some reason no matter what I do I cannot get Thunderbird to actually connect with my Dreamhost email account. Every time I try to connect:

- I see "Connecting to mail.mydomain.com" in the status bar
- I get an alert box after a few minutes with the message "Connection to server mail.mydomain.com timed out"

I've checked and rechecked all the settings I've input for my Dreamhost IMAP account and no matter what I do it simply will not connect. I've tried my primary alias for username, my actual system username, disabling my firewall (BlackICE), specifically opening port 143 on my firewall to all traffic, etc., but nothing seems to help.

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I'm having this problem in every client I've tried, but just in one computer of our office. Can't understand what happens. No firewalls, the connection seems to be ok, but always timed out. It can't even connect to a POP account in Dreamhost, but it can connect to other servers.

Any idea will be apreciated. Thanks

I would try rebooting the computer in this case. I've seen cases where a particular network port was somehow locked or blocked by an application and a reboot cleared it up.

You can try telnetting to the IMAP or POP port from the command prompt to see what happens. POP is port 110.

- Dallas
- DreamHost Head Honcho/Founder

I've tried rebooting several times. It worked yesterday with this computer but another ISP (both spaniards), but it fails with the one we have in the office, but there are no problems with the other five machines. It's a weird thing.

Thanks.

Hmm, that is weird. Did you try the telnet thing?

You'd do it like this:
telnet mail.domain.com 143
telnet mail.domain.com 110

That's three separate parts with spaces between them. If you can connect to those ports you should be able to check email.

- Dallas
- DreamHost Head Honcho/Founder