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Apple Mail using 2.5GB real and 4GB virtual memory! **HELP**

A

Apple!Fre@k

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 25, 2006
521
6
My Apple Mail has all of a sudden become incredibly useless. The trouble started back on Monday and I thought the issue would resolve itself. It hasn't, even after multiple restarts. In fact, the issue is plaguing both of my iMacs, very strangely at the same time and in the same way.

I don't know what's happening. All I know is that if Apple Mail is closed and I open it, I have about 5 minutes to do e-mail before it starts going VERY slow and then a minute or two later stops responding all together and I have to force quit and do the process all over again.

I finally took a look at the Activity Monitor and why it's freezing is obvious. I have 3GB of RAM (maxed out) in my 24" iMac and Apple Mail is taking nearly 2.5GB of real memory at the time of it crashing, and almost 4GB of virtual memory.

What is causing this? In the meantime, I virtually cannot send e-mails and this is very hampering to me.

Is this an IMAP problem with GMail? I imagine that's the only thing that would explain this given that's the only thing linking the e-mail on both of my iMacs. But if so, what's going on?!?

Any help is appreciated.
 
I dont know the answer, but my Fiance uses her Gmail on her user on my macpro with no issues what so ever.

Yet on my user i have endless issues with outbound mail :confused:
 
I have this problem when I have watched a .wav file. I have flip4mac. This is a known issue. I quit mail and open it back up and it's fine after that until I watch another .wav file...

Nuc
 
hhmm can i recommend that you leave Mail alone for a few hours to let it do its thing?? it might sort itself out, maybe its some sort of backup process (no idea).
 
DoFoT9 said:
hhmm can i recommend that you leave Mail alone for a few hours to let it do its thing?? it might sort itself out, maybe its some sort of backup process (no idea).
Click to expand...

Agreed. Perhaps it is trying to index your mail. I've never heard of this problem before and I've been reading this forums pretty consistently for a couple of years now.
 
Cromulent said:
Agreed. Perhaps it is trying to index your mail. I've never heard of this problem before and I've been reading this forums pretty consistently for a couple of years now.
Click to expand...

that could be a possibiltiy. i remember a friend said his mail was going crazy one day, he let it go and it seemed to fix itself.. hopefully the OP's will do the same.
 
DoFoT9 said:
that could be a possibiltiy. i remember a friend said his mail was going crazy one day, he let it go and it seemed to fix itself.. hopefully the OP's will do the same.
Click to expand...

Didn't work. I left it open last night as I was sleeping and it will still spinning in the morning.

What do I do???
 
There might be a chance it is GMail's problem as I was getting duplicates and wasn't able to send from my Gmail account in Mail two days ago. Everything works fine now though.

I would "reload" the Gmail account into Mail if it doesn't resolve itself.
 
cosmokanga2 said:
There might be a chance it is GMail's problem as I was getting duplicates and wasn't able to send from my Gmail account in Mail two days ago. Everything works fine now though.

I would "reload" the Gmail account into Mail if it doesn't resolve itself.
Click to expand...

It appears it is an issue with GMail and the incoming server. I figured out a temporary work around that at least allows me to write e-mails without Mail freezing up. What I did was remove the incoming mail password so it essentially could not connect to the incoming mail server. I also told it not to automatically check for mail so it wouldn't just keep prompting me for my password.

After I did that, it hasn't froze anymore and stays at using anywhere from 60MB to 800MB of real memory, miles away from the 2.5GB it was using that was crashing my system.

But, here's the catch I don't understand: Previously, Apple Mail didn't show it was downloading anything when the problem was occurring. So if the problem is rectified by not letting Apple Mail communicate to the incoming server, then what's going on?

I'm confused!
 
Apple!Fre@k said:
But, here's the catch I don't understand: Previously, Apple Mail didn't show it was downloading anything when the problem was occurring. So if the problem is rectified by not letting Apple Mail communicate to the incoming server, then what's going on?

I'm confused!
Click to expand...

Try the connection doctor, its very helpful to find out what's going on
 
trule said:
Try the connection doctor, its very helpful to find out what's going on
Click to expand...

What is the connection doctor?

I just ran into another problem. Tried adding my password back in so I could receive e-mail. It won't work. It does nothing. Tried removing the account and then adding it again. It does nothing. WTF is going here? I can send but that's it. Can't receive if my life depended on it.
 
Ninja Guidan said:
Do you have any large attachments on your incoming mail?
Click to expand...

Nope. Incoming mail seems to be coming through just fine. After a few minutes of Mail being open though, and with the activity monitor in Apple Mail itself showing no incoming or outgoing, if I watch the Activity Monitor app for my entire system, I will see Apple Mail start jumping 10MB a second in real memory usage, starting from 70MB until it gets up to 2GB and freezes my entire system. It goes from 70MB to 2GB in about 2 minutes or so.
 
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