Hello Ray

From what I can tell so far, it's likely your problem is being caused because Thunderbird isn't setup properly. To get the ball rolling, let me know the last part (the bit after the @ symbol) of the e-mail address you're trying to use.

Because you can access the Internet fine in Windows 7, e-mail should work fine too so there's nothing wrong with your router setup.

Thanks Ray.

My experience of Thunderbird is virtually zero so here are some general tips for you:

Firstly, go here and see if you can login OK to TalkTalk Webmail. If you can then you know your password is correct and you can proceed to checking Thunderbird's mail settings:

Open Thunderbird and click the "Tools" menu then "Account Settings". Make sure the settings are as follows:

Username is your full TalkTalk e-mail address

Incoming (POP) server should be mail.talktalk.net

Outgoing (SMTP) server should be smtp.talktalk.net

If you still can't get it to work then delete the mail account from Thunderbird and start from scratch in creating a new one using these instructions.

"...The incoming server showed as "imap" not "mail" so I just had to type in one word."

Ah, given the symptoms you'd reported, I was expecting you'd find a problem with the username or password.

Glad to hear it's working, but from what you've said above, it might be worth explaining the differences between the IMAP and POP mail protocols. POP is the protocol used by the vast majority of folks and it works well, but only when one e-mail client is ever used. An "e-mail client" is simply a mail program like Thunderbird or Outlook Express etc. IMAP on the other hand is for folks who use multiple e-mail clients and/or devices and want the same e-mails and folders to be synchronised and to appear in all clients.

You're now setup to use the POP protocol so all your new (and old) messages will be downloaded to Thunderbird in Windows 7 and will be deleted from the server so they won't be available to any other e-mail client. If that's not what you were using before, and you don't want it that way, then you need IMAP. In that case we need to start from scratch again.