VM not prompting IMAP password on initial startup

Hi. I'm trying (and mostly succeeding) to upgrade to vm 8.2.0b (emacs 24.2) from
vm 7.19 (emacs 20.3 -- yes, 20.3, I built that binary in 1996 and have been using it
for the past decade and a half!), Solaris 10 SPARC.

I've managed to figure out pretty much every issue but one: When I first fire up
vm (M-x vm), everything works (reads .vm; loads my inbox, etc.) except that vm
does not ask me for my IMAP password, rather it fails and beeps at me. If I then
issue a "g" command, it nicely asks for my password, successfully gloms onto my
IMAP server, downloads new email, and so on; everything works fine afterwards.

Here is the *Messages* output showing initial failure on fresh startup:

For information about GNU Emacs and the GNU system, type C-h C-a.
("/home/rhouk/emacs-VM/vm-8.2.0b-gnu23/lisp" "~/elisp" "/pkg/gnu/share/emacs/24.2/site-lisp" "/pkg/gnu/share/emacs/site-lisp" "/pkg/gnu/share/emacs/24.2/lisp" "/pkg/gnu/share/emacs/24.2/lisp/vc" "/pkg/gnu/share/emacs/24.2/lisp/url" "/pkg/gnu/share/emacs/24.2/lisp/textmodes" "/pkg/gnu/share/emacs/24.2/lisp/progmodes" "/pkg/gnu/share/emacs/24.2/lisp/play" "/pkg/gnu/share/emacs/24.2/lisp/org" "/pkg/gnu/share/emacs/24.2/lisp/nxml" ...)
("/home/rhouk/emacs-VM/vm-8.2.0b-gnu23/info" "/pkg/gnu/share/info/" "/usr/local/share/info/" "/usr/local/info/" "/usr/local/gnu/info/" "/usr/local/gnu/lib/info/" "/usr/local/gnu/lib/emacs/info/" "/usr/local/emacs/info/" "/usr/local/lib/info/" "/usr/local/lib/emacs/info/")
vm-autoloads
WARNING: Could not load feature bbdb.
WARNING: Related functions may not work correctly!
Adding vm-rfaddons-option `check-recipients'.
Adding vm-rfaddons-option `check-for-empty-subject'.
Adding vm-rfaddons-option `encode-headers'.
VM-RFADDONS: Options loaded.
Reading folder /home/rhouk/VMAIL... done
Reading attributes... done
Reordering messages... done
3619 messages, 3 new, 0 unread, 3001 deleted [2 times]
Checking for new mail for /home/rhouk/VMAIL...
vm-imap-make-session: Need password for <email address hidden>@stbeehive.oracle.com [Inbox] for movemail

Then when I type "g":

Checking for new mail...
Added to /home/rhouk/VMAIL
Got mail from <email address hidden>@stbeehive.oracle.com [Inbox].
3621 messages, 4 new, 0 unread, 3001 deleted [2 times]

and everything's fine after that.

A brief excerpt from my .vm file:

;; Reading behavior
(setq vm-auto-get-new-mail t) ; Read spool(s) on M-x vm
(setq vm-startup-with-summary nil) ; Don't startup with summary
(setq vm-preview-lines nil) ; No preview, just display whole msg
(setq vm-jump-to-unread-messages t) ; Jump to unread messages before new
(setq vm-jump-to-new-messages nil)
(setq-default vm-summary-show-threads nil) ; Don't thread msgs by default
(setq vm-skip-deleted-messages t) ; Skip over ("n", "p") deleted msgs
(setq vm-skip-read-messages nil) ; Do NOT skip over merely-read msgs
(setq vm-auto-next-message nil) ; Do not SPACE to next msg, only "n"
(setq vm-move-after-deleting t) ; Goto next message on delete
(setq vm-mail-check-interval nil) ; I'll manually check when I want to

I'll send you my whole .vm file if you want it; didn't want to include the whole thing here.

I've tentatively assumed that none of the rf-addons stuff (see *Messages* above)
could possibly impact initial IMAP read/startup, since the configured Makefiles don't
work for me on Solaris-10, I haven't yet tried to manually de-configure the vm-rfaddons.
I've also assumed this is a user configuration error, not a bug, since every other
problem I've encountered has been resolved in my .vm file.

TIA!

     -RDH (Robert D. Houk)