Mail 3.7 - app can't "get new mail" - as though not online

[seanylala]

Hi

I am using OS X version 10.5.7.

Mail version 3.6 (935/935.3)

As of yesterday my Mail program has failed. The symptom is that in the left window under 'mailboxes" when the "get mail" button is selected, the process activates, BUT !!! ...... the search fails - as though there is no internet connection. None of the accounts receive their mail, and the circle containing the exclamation mark signal appear. (Note, there is email arriving at the ISP... I checked using the ISPs webmail facility. I've tried retyping the password in the Mail settings... it's done correctly, so are the other settings for the ISP, but no luck).

Sends have been successful.

Any advice here? I was hoping to extract (or archive? whatever that means) the actual messages and settings, then reinstalling the mail application. However, it seems from reading some posts that it might be necessary to instal the whole OS X system afresh to achieve this result. Of further concern to me is that it might not be possible to separate the messages in the mail application from the application itself. I don't want to just backup the mail folder then reinstal it, as i suspect there is something wrong with that folder, so I would just be reintroducing the bug into the reinstalled OSX... which would defeat the purpose.

Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers

 

[MisterMe]

Despite the fact that my ISP continues to send and receive messages via its webmail client, sometimes its POP and SMTP servers are taken down rendering Mail unable send or receive. This would be my explanation if your problem were limited to a single mail provider. However, you claim that your problem exists across all of your [unnamed] mail accounts. For this, I have no explanation. My guess is that you buggered a setting or settings. Without access to your system, it is impossible to say what is wrong.