My mail application keeps crashing, I select mail and it just comes up with
'The application mail has unexpectedly quit'
It's the standard mail program that comes with the mac and I've not had problems with it before, any ideas?

 

have you run the "repair disk permissions"?

(found in Utilities, Disk utility)

Dan

 

Whenever an app gets troublesome I run the permissions mentioned above. Then I do a 'sudo periodic daily/weekly/monthly' refresh in Terminal to remove old temp files, followed by a restart flashing the PRAM (cmd/alt/p/r held down before the 'chung' sound until it 'chungs' again). See if that gets you anywhere then report back.

 

Right I've done everything except the Terminal bit, not sure how to do this and didn't want to cause more problems by guessing lol
Still getting the same message with the mail program, although I do now have my start up chime back

 

Launch Terminal and type (copy & paste it exactly)....

sudo periodic daily

...it will probably ask for your admin password and will run the temp file flush once entered. When the cursor reappears it has finished. Then type....

sudo periodic weekly

....this will run without the p/w as you have already validated. Then type...

sudo periodic monthly

....when the cursor appears quit and restart, and do the PRAM again.

You could download Mac Pilot to run many maintenance tasks for you too.

 

I have mac pilot, just never got round to asking it to do anything lol
When I typed the commands above, apart from the first one where it asked for password, nothing happened, or if it did it was very quick - is this right?
And I got this message lol:

We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these two things:

#1) Respect the privacy of others.
#2) Think before you type.

Actually I don't have Mac Pilot, I have Mac Janitor, don't know if this would do the same function?

 

Visually nothing happens, but 'sudo periodic' removes all old and unnecessary temp and system files which can cause problems. OS X does have an automatic purge of these, but it occurs at an obscure time of day and if your Mac is usually switched off then it gets skipped until it eventually does catch it on. I know mine is virtually always off overnight, so I 'sudo' monthly.

 

I'm sorry I have to do it...

You want to get Vista, damn Macs and their instabilities

 

OK well I've done this now and still no mail....mines on 24/7 and has been since I got it about 5 years ago lol this is the first time I've had any problems but the all seem to have come along at once and I can't afford to buy another atm.

Oh, and I hate PC's last one I had nearly went out the window and to add to this my partner has a PC but he still comes and uses my Mac instead

 

Try throwing away the 'com.apple.mail.plist' file and see what happens.

 

I've never had a problem with mine but my colleagues Mail always crashes on quit... Never worked it out... :-(

 

It comes up with 'you have no mail accounts' when I try and start mail now...

 

You'll need to reconfigure the POP settings for your accounts in Mail preferences....

 

What version of Mac OS X are you running?

 

10.2.8

 

Is there no way of doing it so I get my old mail back? Had a few bits and bobs I needed to keep on there... and have 5 different mail addys to reconfigure too, which will be a bit of a pain as I can't remember all the passwords lol.

 

Ooppps, OH was still logged on so I replied as him

 

Did you happen to have a backup of you machine? If so, then you probably want to restore that pref file you deleted, as it'll contain the account information. The actual mail folders, containing the messages, should still be on the machine (Have a look in your Home folder, there will be a Library folder and a Mail folder, and in there should be a fair few other folders with mail in them)

If you don't have a backup of that file, then you will need to re-enter the information, as mail does not store it elsewhere. As mentioned, the actual mail should still be there, so once you enter the account info, you should still be able to view it. Even if you cannot remember the mail account's password, you should still be able to do this. The password is only really there for sending/retrieving mail from the mail server.

The reason I asked about the version of Mac OS X you were running is so I could see if I've got an appropriate copy of the mail.app file that I could send to you, as it sounds as though the application could well be corrupt.

I do have a copy of mail.app from 10.2.8, which should work on your setup. The first thing I would suggest you do however, as mentioned above, would be to re-enter the account settings.

My though would then be to take a backup of the Mail folder in the Library folder, along with the pref file we had previously deleted, then take a copy of the current mail.app (use the option to compress/zip it) and then delete the mail.app and replace it with a fresh copy of the mail application and see how things go.