For the last couple days, I have been having difficulty sending and receiving my pop3 mail using Thunderbird. When I first open it, it will query my accounts for mail, but will not download it. There are no visible errors, it just will not download. I can verify there is mail by using the webmail interface. If I try to send an email, I immediately get the error that "The message could not be sent because the connection to Outgoing server (SMTP) some.domain.com timed out."
I looked through the Thunderbird forums and the suggestion was to turn off antivirus and see if that fixes it. Which, in fact, it does. I go into Settings->Active Protection and turn off MailShield and suddenly I can both send and receive emails.
Now. With Thunderbird still open, if I turn MailShield back on, I can still send and receive. But if I close Thunderbird with MailShield on, then reopen it, I can no longer send or receive. But, if I leave it off and close/reopen Thunderbird, I can send and receive. Ahhhhhhh!
So, my wonder is if this is related to the last Avast update (6-18-15) or if it may be an issue with Thunderbird's last update (6-28-15) or both?
Any ideas?