Mail doesn't start up anymore. Help

[iKarl]

So just randomly a few days ago Mail stopped working. I have it setup with my account fine. It was working sending/receiving mail for 2 weeks. Then just one day I open Mail, it opens, but all the windows are blank, like I've never had any Mail. Then the little balloon comes up and it never fully launches. I open Force Quit and it always has Mail in red with the (not responding) next to it. I Force Quit, reload it, same problem.

I have all the latest updates installed, including the Mac Mini SMC firmware updater. Although this problem existed before I updated the firmware, so it can't be because of that.

 

[depperl]

I had a similar problem some time ago - got a mail with a .wmv-attachment and I had a "wrong" plug-in installed. So every time Mail wanted to open this mail it crashed - or stopped responding forever.

Do you know what your last received mail was ??

 

[iKarl]

I had a friend try to send me some emails with picture attachments. I load up mail to see if they've arrived, and then the blankness. Ever since, it's been the same. I can check it all on mac.com, and they arrived. This is annoying. Is there anyway to reinstall just Mail and not all of OSX?

 

[mad jew]

Try removing them in .Mac because they may be corrupt. There are ways of reinstalling Mail but I'd try a few other techniques first.

 

[iKarl]

Try removing them in .Mac because they may be corrupt. There are ways of reinstalling Mail but I'd try a few other techniques first.

I downloaded the pics and they open fine. I've now deleted any mail that I received after I started getting problems, including the picture attachment ones.

Mail still blanks and bubbles on me.

 

[mad jew]

Okay, well since .Mac is effectively an IMAP provider, you could reconfigure your account. This means dragging a file named com.apple.mail.plist to the Desktop whilst Mail is closed. Next time you start Mail, it should act as though you've never put an account's details into it and it should let you reconfigure it. This is effectively the same as reinstalling the Mail app.

 

[iKarl]

Okay, well since .Mac is effectively an IMAP provider, you could reconfigure your account. This means dragging a file named com.apple.mail.plist to the Desktop whilst Mail is closed. Next time you start Mail, it should act as though you've never put an account's details into it and it should let you reconfigure it. This is effectively the same as reinstalling the Mail app.

Haha I just got finished doing that over the phone with Apple. She just had me delete it though. But yea, that was apparently corrupted and causing the spaz-outs.

Thanks for the help anywho guys.

 

[mad jew]

Ha.

I was hoping it wouldn't come to that because it can be a pain to reconfigure but I'm glad it's all working now. FWIW, moving a PLIST file to a different location has the same effect as deleting it, but obviously it can later be recovered if its removal didn't help, meaning you don't lose any customised settings.