[G4] Mail Problem X.4.8 Mail 2.1

[Wayne Wilkin]

Ok so this morning I launched my Mac Email with my Dot Mac account  
and 2 very important folders were missing. I thought that maybe I  
could have deleted one but not both. I figured when I left and got to  
job 2 I would look in my ~/Library/Mail folder to see if the folders  
were their, they were. I made a copy of them to my desktop and then  
launched Mail. The folders disappeared in the Mail program and also  
in the ~/Library/Mail folder. I thought good thing I made a backup. I  
went to go use the Import function in Mail and it wouldn't import,  
said no valid mbox files were found. I then went into one of the  
folders and double clicked on one of the messages and it opened right  
up in Mail. So I figured, I'll just make a new folder within Mail  
quit Mail, copy all the messages out of the backup and put them in  
the ~/Library/Mail/Mac-macsys/Kronos.imapmbox. Relaunched Mail. No  
dice, the messages are still in the location I copied them into on  
the hard drive but do not show up in the Mail Program. This is truly  
the strangest thing I have ever seen, well maybe not, but any help  
with this would be appreciated. And before you ask, yes ran disk  
utility, repaired permissions, diskwarrior, TCC, etc, no help. Thanks  
in advance, Wayne.