[iBook] Re: Is this a crash?

[Larry Kollar]

Thomas Bridgeland wrote:

> I also had a 'crash' recently with Mail, using 10.2.8. I was opening 
> Mail when it suddenly froze solid, and everything on the Finder froze 
> too. I couldn't Force Quit, couldn't do anything but restart, nothing 
> responded with anything but a spinning beachball. I tried this several 
> times and can't get Mail to load completely. It loads partway then 
> everything freezes and I have to shut down and restart. I don't want 
> to trash it and reinstall Mail, because there are some important 
> recent e-mails I need to save. Any hints would be appreciated.

Try trashing Mail's preferences file -- (your 
folder)/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist -- just move it to the 
Desktop or something -- then start Mail. If it stops blowing up, trash 
the old prefs file. You'll have to re-enter your account information 
and restore other settings.

Preferences files can get corrupted; this was a problem in pre-OSX days 
for some applications as well.

--
Larry Kollar    k  o  l  l  a  r  @  a  l  l  t  e  l  .  n  e  t
"The hardest part of all this is the part that requires thinking."
-- Paul Tyson, on xml-doc