Thunderbird authentication issue
Good morning,
I'm hoping someone on Pprune will be able to help me sort out my latest computer problem, as you very kindly did on a previous occasion.
Problem: my ISP told me to change my email password because the account was being used by spammers. I did so and everything was fine for 48 hours. [I'm happy with Thunderbird and have used it for several years so don't plan to change. I work from home and it has been very reliable tool.] After two days the situation changed. Each time after I opened Thunderbird, I received a request for my password before incoming mail was downloaded. I contacted my ISP which advised that the problem was my authentication settings. Mine is somehow now set to "no authentication" which means I have to put the password in each time I open Thunderbird. It should be set to something along the lines of "authentication required" with the option to insert a password. After doing so, my mail would download - as it did previously - without my typing anything after I open Thunderbird. However, my ISP couldn't tell me how to find these settings. Several of their staff said they were unfamiliar with Thunderbird's workings but I should be able to find it under "Settings". I opened "Settings" but didn't find an option to change things. A Google search also didn't answer my question. Can anyone help?
Two less important problems: on my wife's computer, in her Chrome browser the first page shown is something called "sweetim.com" - some kind of search engine's home page that announces I've won an iPad for being the lucky 999,999th visitor. I'd like to remove it but it's not in Programs and Features. I followed step-by-step instructions to remove it on one occasion - but it's still there. [It's only one click to get rid of it each time so that our normal home page appears - but it's annoying.] In her Firefox browser, a search engine called Alot (that's how they spell it) suddenly appears. It, too, isn't in Programs and Features - but I found a removal method which worked, only to have it reappear after a few days. We prefer the Google search engine. So how do I get rid of Alot for good?
Many thanks for any suggestions.