New install, Windows 11 - can't add email account if not an administrator
Just got a new Windows 11 Home laptop. My account is an Administrator and my wife is a normal user. I downloaded and installed Thunderbird, and can add email accounts without a problem.
If my wife logs in and runs Thunderbird, when she tries to add an account, an error is shown - something like "Error creating account". The credentials are correct, and the same happens whether I try STARTTLS or SSL/TLS.
As a temporary measure, I made my wife an Administrator - after this she can add email accounts. If I make her a normal user again, as far as I can tell, she can still access the email accounts created above. This doesn't seem a great solution, though, as she may need to add other accounts in future and I'm worried there may be other subtle issues that I haven't spotted yet.
Has anyone else seen similar issues? Is there a way I could uninstall Thunderbird and reinstall with different settings, so we don't see this issue?
Cheers.
Modified by gcogger
Chosen solution
try installing Thunderbird in her account not yours. One of the options that comes up when installing software as an administrator is an option to make this the copy for all users. Not good for most users as they do not have write privileges to the folder the administrator created the profile in.
Before you do that, you might try running Thunderbird -p from a windows run dialog using her account (windows key+R) and creating a new profile in her windows profile
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Chosen Solution
try installing Thunderbird in her account not yours. One of the options that comes up when installing software as an administrator is an option to make this the copy for all users. Not good for most users as they do not have write privileges to the folder the administrator created the profile in.
Before you do that, you might try running Thunderbird -p from a windows run dialog using her account (windows key+R) and creating a new profile in her windows profile
Thanks Matt. It seems to be working now, but it's a bit odd. I ran the profile manager as you suggested, and the existing profile was in my wife's AppData\Roaming area, so should have been accessible. I tried creating a new profile anyway (in exactly the same location) and she can add email addresses using that profile. I've no idea why that worked, but I suspect something odd in Windows 11! Thanks for the help.
My guess is she did not have write access to one of the files that stores profile locations and last version. Creating the new profile in exactly the same place will have created a new file in a location she has write access to.