I am trying to help a friend who is beginning to suffer from Alzheimers. He has a 6 years old laptop with WIN 10 and uses Thunderbird as his email client. Since 22nd October he has been unable to use Thunderbird because it keeps demanding a PRIMARY PASSWORD. He has never set one. I have spent the best part of two half days trying to deal with his problems without success. I suspect that some APP on his PC is the problem, but he has so many, and so little memory of what has been done that the task is very difficult! No matter what we did the PRIMARP PASSWORD box kept reappearing. In ultimate frustration I used the WIN 10 APPS option in SETTINGS to remove both Firefox and Thunderbird. I I then downloaded and reinstalled Thunderbird - but found that it STILL asked for a PRIMARY PASSWORD!! We tried the nuclear option of creating a PRIMARY PASSWORD, but it still wouldn't accept it! So I tried to delete the PRIMARY PASSWORD. But it wouldn't recognise the PRIMARY PASSWORD I had set either!! He is using a paid for version of AVAST by the way I wonder what can be done next? His email is fine by the way - if I check it on webmail on my own kit HELP PLEASE

See https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/protect-your-thunderbird-passwords-master-password#w_resetting-your-master-password-if-you-have-forgotten-it

Thanks @sfhowes that did the trick

Hi, I went through the Primary Password Reset procedure, but Thunderbird is still asking for a password.

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/protect-your-thunderbird-passwords-primary-password?redirectslug=protect-your-thunderbird-passwords-master-password&redirectlocale=en-US#w_resetting-your-master-password-if-you-have-forgotten-it

Please assist me with this problem.

/Paul

Sorry, my bad, I have resolved this issue.