[X4U] Mail quits

[Simon Forster]

On 21 Oct 2006, at 22:20, Karlene Goodman wrote:

> I am running a G4 12" powerbook with the current OS and suddenly my  
> mail program
> crashes every time I open it.  I trashed the pref file in my home  
> folder library
> with no effect.  I rebooted and no effect.  Mail opens then starts  
> to download
> (spinning thing) then quits unexpectedly. I don't even get an error  
> message.  I
> have all the recent Apple software updates and the only new  
> software is
> Retrospect Express 6 and a program called Speed tools utilities  
> that came with
> my new external HD.  Anyone had this problem?  Any idea how to fix  
> it?  Thanks.

Interesting. Mac OS X 10.4.8?

I had the same symptoms Thursday last week. Start Mail, it begins to  
download messages (spinning disk beside accounts in Mail) and then,  
after a while, poof. Mail gone. Every time. At first I thought a  
corrupt email on the server - but eventually ruled that out. Rebuilt  
the prefs file. No good. Crash log showed a fairly uninformative  
generic memory error. Trashing everything in ~/Library/Mail/ which  
wasn't a folder (I kept "Signatures.plist" though - too lazy to have  
to rebuild them unless I have to), fixed the problem.

It's my hypothesis that the issue was caused by a corrupt  
MessageRules.plist (it's only when the rules are applied that Mail  
blows up). Try moving "MessageRules.plist" and  
"MessageRules.plist.backup" to the desktop and then starting Mail.  
Does that fix the issue? If it does, you'll have to rebuild your  
rules - but if they're anything like mine you've got a few years of  
cruft in there, so no bad thing.

Let me know if this helps.

ATB

Simon Forster
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