Why would you been to do this? Timeouts are symptomatic of other problems, often a poor email scanner in anti virus products, but the best approach is to fix the problem, not paper over it.

This is a typical response from the IT community. Instead of solutions more questions, if I was giving advise, I would be giving examples not just a blunt response.

buildco said

This is a typical response from the IT community. Instead of solutions more questions, if I was giving advise, I would be giving examples not just a blunt response.

But you are not giving advise you are asking questions, and not providing sufficient information to provide a full answer. I find it incredible that those that do not know appear to think they set the terms on which the discussion occurs. But they do, by sitting on their hands and not answering the questions necessary to do thing properly.

So here is the answer to your original question. http://kb.mozillazine.org/Modify_Thunderbird_settings#Change_connection_timeout I found it by using Google. Perhaps it will help. It might if your anti virus is the problem slowing your machine, but otherwise it is unlikely to. But it is your choice to do it the hard way.

Bye.