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iCloud system preferences freezes on "Loading iCloud"

R

RoboCop001

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Oct 4, 2005
1,574
454
Toronto, Canada
I found a couple of other similar topics but they aren't quite the problem I'm getting.

When I click iCloud it now freezes on "Loading iCloud"

The crash log mentions something about Mail.

Mail works fine, but at one point I turned Mail off and on in the iCloud preferences and I was adding and removing Mail accounts within Mail. Not sure if that messed up anything.

I can't find any com.apple.icloud.plist or anything of the sort in preferences.

I ran permissions repair and disk repair in recovery mode, but that didn't help.

Before I purchase a support incident for phone help at Apple or bring it to an Apple store, does anyone have any ideas?

I may just restore back to 10.7.1 and update it again.
 
I've got the same problem, if I load up system preferences (and its on the mail, contacts & calendars tab), I get a beach ball for ages for around 30 seconds before some accounts pop-up in the left hand pane. I seem to have 2 x accounts, one is an iCloud account that I was testing with previously (marked inactive), the other just says iCloud with Calendars beneath it. The beach ball then continues for about a minute before System Preferences crashes with the following error:

Code: 
Crashed Thread:  4  Dispatch queue: Garbage Collection Work Queue

Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000000
 
same icloud crashing Sys Prefs problem

Same here;

"loading iCloud"
then long pause
then beach ball
then System Preferences becomes unresponsive

I have no "@me" mail or Calendar on my MBP anymore

I can access iCloud online and on my iPhone

I've been through Express Lane, Genius Bar and then handed off twice online and sent to a Senior Advisor, who is suggesting I dump my Admin log in account and just use another account on my MBP since I can access iCloud through that...

no not happy with Apple these days
(on a side note, I seriously suspect they screwed my external Hard drive with Lion as well...)

:mad:
 
Same problem, crashes when loading "Mail, Contact & Calendars" or "iCloud". I too noticed the problems began after enabling Mail in iCloud, which it didn't successfully do (the box remained unchecked).
 
System preferences crashes

Having the same problem. When I try and open Icloud in system preferences, computer gets really slow and then everything closes. Not being able to change my Icloud preferences makes me not able to locate my MBP with the "find my device" app.
 
I've fixed it!

After 10.7.3 the double reboot problem seems to have gone away on its own.

But I've had success in repairing my inrecibly slow Mail and frozen iCloud preferences.

I can't guarantee this works for everyone, but here is what I did.

I suggest performing a Time Machine backup before completing these steps.

Quit Mail, Calendar, Address Book, and System Preferences if they are open.

Step 1

Go to your user Library. Lion hides this folder by default, so in order to do this you must go to your Home folder and then select Go > Go to folder... in the Go menu, or hit Command + Shift + G on the keyboard.

Type in "Library" and hit Return. You should now see the contents of your Library folder.

Perform a search for "icloud", making sure it's only searching the Library folder by using the search parameters at the top of the window.

Delete the files in the search results.

Step 2

Next, close the search results by hitting the X in the search bar. You should be seeing your Library contents again.

Be warned that this next step may not be necessary, but I did it anyway since I knew I wouldn't be losing my emails by doing this.

Locate the folder called "Mail". Now, before this next step I will say that I have all my email accounts running on IMAP. If you are using POP, I suggest backing up the data within the folder Mail > V2 to make sure you do not lose any emails. If you already have a Time Machine backup that should suffice.

Delete the folder called "Mail". This should get rid of your email accounts, as well as your emails. If you're using IMAP this won't be a problem because when you setup Mail again it will download the emails from your email providers.

Step 3

Open System Preferences. Go to Mail, Contacts & Calendars. If you see an iCloud account, delete it.

Step 4.

Click Show All at the top of System Preferences. Open iCloud preferences. It should now display the iCloud login screen. Log in to iCloud and follow the prompts.

Find My Mac

During the iCloud setup process you may notice that Find My Mac is unavailable. If this is the case, once you've completed the iCloud setup you may see "Requires recovery partition" below the Find My Mac option. Don't worry, a simple restart of your Mac will fix this. Reboot your Mac and you'll be able to activate Find My Mac.

I hope this helps someone out there! I can finally use Mail and iCloud preferences again.
 
A version of the information in this thread worked for me. But I found that you didn't have to remove all the mail data and essentially reset Mail, which is what the instructions above are.


I've written up my way here:

http://mdjcm.wordpress.com/2012/09/26/fixing-the-crashing-icloud-system-preferen ces-bug-mail-preferences-bug/

Got to edit the Accounts.plist and remove the sections/chapters for the MobileMe/Me account specifically.
 
Simpler Fix

This worked for me:
I took the iCloud account offline, by right-clicking it in the list of mailboxes on the left side of the Mail window (Mailboxes/Inbox/iCloud). Then I restarted mail. When it came back iCloud was offline and then I was able to open the Preferences for Mail, delete iCloud, and the re-add it. It resynced my folders and all is well.
 
Icloud and mail preferences not opening in system preferences

Hi,

I fixed this problem in imac running mountain lion 10.8.2.

Problem: Clicking on icloud and Mail,Contacts&Calendar in System Preferences would quit system preferences, hence was unable to access these settings.This problem was specific to this user account.

Apple Support: Got on call with apple, issue got escalated to senior advisor, took remote control of the machine, deleted all cache, preferences and i cloud folder in user/library and now the issue is pending with "Engineering" team. The senior advisor suggested to dump the user account, create a new one and transfer the data.

Fix: I tried opening the icloud in system preferences, watched the log in system.log in console and the error said do not have permissions to write on a specific file inside the folder /users/library.Do not remember the exact file location but it was the file inside contents/notes folder of library. The log file gives the file path for this file though. i found that this file did not have write permissions for the user. Hence i clicked "Library", get info --> apply permissions to all enclosing folders. After this, i could open icloud and mail preferences.

This fix worked for me but it could differ for other users, I would suggest looking into the log file in console while opening icloud in Sys Prefs.
 
This could be it!

Eureka! Super simple solution that worked for me: the culprit to iCloud preference pane freezing & Mail grinding to a halt was... iCloud Photos! Use Activity Monitor to see if any iCloud processes (search: icloud) are not responding. If so, force quit processes and see if you're back in action.

:cool:
 
iCloud is even sluggish when I try to open t on my windows laptop. I try to open notes and mail but it's really slow. Is there a problem with the site?
 
sauergraph said:
Eureka! Super simple solution that worked for me: the culprit to iCloud preference pane freezing & Mail grinding to a halt was... iCloud Photos! Use Activity Monitor to see if any iCloud processes (search: icloud) are not responding. If so, force quit processes and see if you're back in action.

:cool:
Click to expand...

What is iCloud Photos? Is it photo stream?
 
mobile me

Late post to this thread but my challenge was similar; trying to open iCloud resulted in the spinning color wheel, and Apple Mail was hanging up asking for my p/w to my mail server.

Solution: I closed out MobileMe since the app was still active, i.e. I was still signed in.

System Preferences > Mail, Contacts & Calendars selected MobileMe from the left column, then selected the minus sign from the bottom left corner of the same column. Signed out of MobileMe.

Apple Mail prompted me for my p/w for my mail app which I entered and the problem disappeared.

R/pp
 
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