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gathering children from disk

L

lookatme

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Does anyone know why my email program says "Gathering children from disk..." upon start-up, and sometimes this freezes my mail program?
Is this a virus? What is it? Why? 😕
 
I doubt it is a virus, very much doubt that!

Maybe you have a file called 'Children' ?

Don't worry it's not a virus.

Rich.
 
well i can't say i've ever heard of anything like this. but since it seems to think that the children are somewhere on the disk, i don't suppose there'd be any harm typing 'children' into spotlight and seeing what comes up...
 
mail.jpg


It's been discussed before -- you can google for it... it appears to have to do with loading saved message sub-folders into Mail.app...I think the length of time it takes varies with the complexity of your folder arrangement and the size of the folder contents....

Here is a link.
 
G5 Dual
MAC OS 10.3.9
MAIL 1.3.11

Can't take a screen shot, as it only happens every once in a while...
and of course, never when I would expect it too...

It shows up in my activity window, in the exact place where your message count does ie. 1534 messages or
"Authenticating as..."

Does this help?
I am perplexed.
 
Have you read mkrishnan's link? It seems like a pretty normal process, albeit strangely named. 🙂
 
Aha!
Just read the rest of the posts. (Thanks ya'll.)
I thought it might be something like that.
Some mac employed code writer thinks their funny. 😱
And, yeah, has anyone EVER had a virus other than that annoying worm virus from 5 or 6 yrs ago on their mac? Why oh why, are PC's still around???
 
If the lag in start is excessive, you might try going into your saved mail, selecting each sub-folder within the saved mail / on my mac / whatever folder, and selecting Rebuild from the Mailbox menu (I think this is the same command in Panther). Rebuilding the child mailboxes might make the process a little faster.
 
lookatme said:
And, yeah, has anyone EVER had a virus other than that annoying worm virus from 5 or 6 yrs ago on their mac? Why oh why, are PC's still around???
Click to expand...


Well, there was this a little while back. It's about as vicious and relevant as the Millennium Bug though.
 
Where do all the emails go?

So I am really tired – apologies for prior mispellings.
A new question, though related:
If I have downloaded my emails in my IMPORT folder and moved them into SUBFOLDERS, where are they now?
Do these all have to refresh every time I open mail?
Or just the ones in my inbox?
 
I found this solution on another forum, completely works:

close Mail.app, go to User/Library/Preferences and move the com.apple.mail.plist file to the desktop, re-open Mail.app and re-enter your accounts. Fix worked for me.

Basically it's just setting Mail.app back to new. Apparently something gets corrupted in the plist file that can't be fixed simply by removing and re-adding accounts. Instead the whole plist needs to be rebuilt from scratch, which Mail.app does when it's re-opened. Make sure to check that you haven't lost anything before deleting the old plist file (on your desktop). If everything looks ok, then go ahead and delete the old file.

Fix was found here: http://macosx.com/tech-support/mac/reinstalling-apple-s-mail-program/5015.html when I was looking at how to reinstall Mail.app 🙂
lookatme said:
Does anyone know why my email program says "Gathering children from disk..." upon start-up, and sometimes this freezes my mail program?
Is this a virus? What is it? Why? 😕
Click to expand...
 
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