Mail.app lost my accounts. ~Library/Mail intact, though.

Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Installed Google Earth 4 beta and SketchUp yesterday with Mail.app running. Everything was fine till I rebooted. Even though my ~Library/Mail folder has all of my accounts intact, Mail doesn't recognize them, and makes me go through the New Acct. Set Up Wizard. I did this and then imported my old accounts and now they show up in an Imported folder, but with 0 messages.



I repaired permissions this morning. Interestingly, Mail remembers some of my offline HD folders (messages from Eudora in the 90s) but has 0 messages in them, even though they're right there in ~Library/Mail.



I made a backup of /Mail 1st thing, but this is very frustrating and worrying. I had two gmail accounts and one httpmail account, and now I have none.



Please help. I've searched support.apple.com and google and macosxhints. I've tried this strange solution to no avail.



On what may be a related note, I repaired permissions not only because of this but also because I couldn't open Photoshop. Permissions didn't do anything, but adding ".app" to the file did. For some reason my machine thought it was either a folder or a script.



Mail v. 2.0.5

Tiger 10.4.5

PB 1.67



Thanks.



--B

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 9
    maccrazymaccrazy Posts: 2,658member
    As you've tried importing from mail directly; and as the files are still in the correct place this sounds like a corruption of some-sort. People experienced problems with Mail when upgrading from Panther to Tiger and lost all their mail - this was fixed in 10.4.1 - although I'm not sure if the mail messages then appeared. I would try installing 10.4.7 here as a last resort.
  • Reply 2 of 9
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    What does Mail show as the location of the Mail Account Directory, when you choose Preferences->Accounts, choose an account, and click the Advanced tab?
  • Reply 3 of 9
    bergzbergz Posts: 1,045member
    Thanks for the replies.



    Since I began this thread, I have been trying various solutions, and in doing so some apparently more serious problems with my HD have appeared.



    It is possible that when my circuit breakers (mains) jumped one night that something happened to my machine. I have tried to repair the disk and neither DiskUtility nor DiskWarrior can repair it (see this apple support thread). The thread, among other things, contains a list of the contents of all of my mail folders which are in ~Library/Mail (which coincides with the Prefs-->accounts info).



    As you can see in the Apple thread, I have had to recreate my accounts, and Mail has in one case made multiple mail folders inside ~Library/Mail.



    httpmail is doing strange things, putting new messages in a buried "on my computer" directory.



    I am no longer using Mail. I consider this to be a problem of the power outage and unsalvageable without reformatting.



    Also, MacCrazy, I am wary of 10.4.7 because of bugs I've read about, and also, my problem occured many months after switching to Tiger from Panther.



    Thanks for your help. If you have any other advice, I am very open to trying other solutions.



    --B
  • Reply 4 of 9
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Sounds like your ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist prefs file got corrupted. If Mail detects a whacked out prefs file, it usually ignores it, and defaults to it's clean boot-up state, and puts you through the set up again. It won't delete any of the old files in ~/Library/Mail, but it'll just ignore them. Corruption in the Preferences directory could also cause other apps to fail to load, or load with a bad state.



    My bet is that's where your HD problems are hitting, or at least one place.
  • Reply 5 of 9
    bergzbergz Posts: 1,045member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kickaha

    Sounds like your ~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist prefs file got corrupted. If Mail detects a whacked out prefs file, it usually ignores it, and defaults to it's clean boot-up state, and puts you through the set up again. It won't delete any of the old files in ~/Library/Mail, but it'll just ignore them. Corruption in the Preferences directory could also cause other apps to fail to load, or load with a bad state.



    My bet is that's where your HD problems are hitting, or at least one place.




    That was actually my first impression, as you can see in my 1st post of the thread I posted above.



    Are you suggesting I trash the prefs file and try to repair again and see what happens? Do you think this would work? DiskWarrior took a day last time since I don't have a FW drive and therefore have to use a boot disk.



    --B
  • Reply 6 of 9
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    No, it'd just kick you back out to the setup wizard again. If the disk can be repaired, it'll be repaired whether that file is there or not.
  • Reply 7 of 9
    I've had the same problem with my MacBook yesterday. I deleted mail prefs, imported my mailboxes, set up new accounts. Today the same thing happened again. I need to dig out my system discs to run repairs...



    Very disappointing, as the macbook is kept quite basic, not much software installed, unlike my PowerMac G5 which is still running fine...



    I've read about other people having the same problems - all using new Macs with Intel processors.



    I too have had various power cuts recently, but the battery on the MacBook and the surge protector should mean this doesn't affect it?
  • Reply 8 of 9
    bergzbergz Posts: 1,045member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by bilbo--baggins

    but the battery on the MacBook and the surge protector should mean this doesn't affect it?



    That's the theory at least. I had serious system-wide file corruption. 10-min chunks of movies unplayable, etc. I have yet to determine if the HD itself was damaged.



    --B
  • Reply 9 of 9
    lundylundy Posts: 4,466member
    I was innocently trying to rearrange the mail folders in the left column, and somehow about 300 emails disappeared. Not in the Trash, or anywhere.



    I had to recover them from backups. And of course, Apple's Backup claimed it could not find the proper Backup file, so I had to open each day's backup file, mount the disk image, and transfer the mails by hand.



    Anybody figured out what those folders on the left DO? I couldn't get them to rearrange by dragging - the folder being dragged always wanted to become a subfolder, rather than staying at the same level in the hierarchy. And I don't have a clue what that folder named "Users" is for - there is nothing in it.
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