That sounds like and anti virus issue really.

Thunderbird actually knows the settings for hotmail. They are in it's database.

If the wizard reports not found, it is almost certainly your anti virus. blocking Thunderbird attempts to connect to the internet to read the database

If you get to the password issues it is not the firewall but usually the anrti virus program you use. This becomes more likely when as you say your having trouble wit one protocol over another.

Anti virus program approach POP and IMAP very differently. (Norton's for instance does not scan SSL secured IMAP accounts but it still manages to mess the communications up sometimes). That POP works and IMAP does not leads me to think your anti virus is the root cause. Try disabling the email scanning component while you configure your account.

you're awesome Matt, it was exactly what you said, my "ESET smart" was blocking the imap server (somehow...) .So i disabled the email protection feature and it worked just well. now i'm gonna deal to keep the protection On and make imap work. if you have any advice how to do that on EsetSmart i'll appreciate it! thanks again Matt :)

Interestingly I use ESET NOB32 V8 and have never had an issue, but I have heard less than complimentary things about their security suite, being slow and somewhat buggy. But I think the same can be said for them all. They make a good anti virus, so the venture into areas where they have no expertise and make a mess.

As I use NOB32 with an IMAP hotmial account. My guess is it will just work once the setup is done.

hmm, NOD32 and ESETsmartSECURITY sould be the same thing, but in my case the moment i enable "IMAP scanner setup" i lose my account's syncro, i have to disable that option to keep using it. but the most wrong things on all this is that the POP3 works fine even with "POP3 scanner setup" enabled, as you said since they have less expertise in emails they make it buggy . i think i should contact eset support for more info. by the way, since i'm pretty noob on email softwares, is there any big danger on leaving that "IMAP scanner setup" disabled ?

As I said right at the beginning, Norton's do not scan SSL secured email At all. Now those folks are I think the market leaders, but they have chosen to leave this mess alone.

Thunderbird does not allow scripts, or flash. So the chances of getting a mail that can actually interact with your system through simply opening it is very close to Zero. I would say Zero but in computing and security threats, th chance is never Zero.

Attachments are also totally inert until you choose to open them. At that point the file is assembled and written to the temp folder The anti virus then gets a chance to scan it before it is opened, just as it would if the file was on a USB stick.

what you said about the temp folder is true . well, fair enough, so i'll just leave it that way then :) thanks again for your help buddy ^^ keep up the fine work