Thunderbird Installation Headaches

OS: Windows 8.1 - New Machine
App: Thunderbird 24.4
Notes: Why is this so hard?

I've been using Thunderbird on my old PC. I want to use it on my now one.Configuring Thunderbird is easy - or at least it should be. I used all the default settings and followed the instructions. Unfortunately, I kept getting a "Username or password is Invalid. Configuration could not be verified - is the Username or password wrong?"

• I logged into gmail directly from the web and it worked fine
•  I repeated entering my password in Thunderbird and no luck

Things that didn't work. Changing the Server Settings including:

1. ports
2. server name
3. user name
4. connection security
5. authentication method

I did change one thing but now I suspect it wasn't needed. Changed mail server from googlemail to gmail. I suspect that was wrong.

Real Cause: My gmail account was protected by 2 step password verification. Oh yeah - I did that several years ago.

Solution: Perform the steps to generate an application specific password and use that instead of my gmail password.

Problem solved :)

Oh, one last thing. I wanted my Thunderbird menus back, so I followed the instructions (hint - right click the tab strip).