Apple Mail keeps crashing frequently after RAM problem

Question

Update: while waiting for a response I managed to solve the matter, first by running mail from a different account (it worked flawlessly); and second by running Onyx - it has the feature of rebuilding mail envelope index - which resolved whatever issue my system had. Anyway.

Thank you for the helpful suggention.

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I am having a problem with Apple Mail. Following a bad RAM problem on my PowerMac G5/10.5.8 Apple Mail 3.6 started to crash frequently, shortly after I open it, or whenever I try to do anything with it, for example when selecting a message or attempting to send a mail. Each time the spinning beachball appears, and mail crashes.

Restarting, permissions repairs and the use of Disk Utility, DiskWarrior and TechTool Pro hasn't helped.

I have included a crash log below:

Process: Mail [782]
Path: /Applications/MAIL/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail
Identifier: com.apple.mail
Version: 3.6 (936)
Build Info: Mail-9360000~1
Code Type: PPC (Native)

Parent Process: launchd [66]


Date/Time: 2015-02-13 21:42:38.367 +0100
OS Version: Mac OS X 10.5.8 (9L31a)

Report Version: 6

Anonymous UUID: A75D0409-433A-44F1-9D38-E34AED349277


Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)

Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x00000000ce6f7b80

Crashed Thread: 11

Thread 11 Crashed:

0 ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore 0x93acd610 CSStoreGetUnit + 56
1 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x920c55d8 CSStringCopyCFString + 92
2 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x920e2acc CSStringBindingCopyCFStrings + 120
3 com.apple.LaunchServices 0x920e2864 _LSCopySchemesAndHandlerURLs + 156
4 com.apple.MessageFramework 0x00960b2c +[URLifier _urlMatchesForString:startIndex:matches:] + 1820
5 com.apple.MessageFramework 0x00960024 +[URLifier urlMatchesForString:] + 348
6 com.apple.mail 0x0004cc44 0x1000 + 310340
7 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x940159a8 __invoking___ + 168
8 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x94015230 -[NSInvocation invoke] + 128
9 com.apple.MessageFramework 0x009f49ec -[MonitoredInvocation invoke] + 392
10 com.apple.MessageFramework 0x009f461c -[InvocationQueue _drainQueue] + 656
11 com.apple.Foundation 0x90ad9d84 __NSThread__main__ + 1004
12 libSystem.B.dylib 0x93438f70 _pthread_start + 316

------

Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x00000000ce6f7b80
Crashed Thread:  10

Thread 10 Crashed:
0   ...ple.CoreServices.CarbonCore  0x93acd610 CSStoreGetUnit + 56
1   com.apple.LaunchServices        0x920c55d8 CSStringCopyCFString + 92
2   com.apple.LaunchServices        0x920e2acc CSStringBindingCopyCFStrings + 120
3   com.apple.LaunchServices        0x920e2864 _LSCopySchemesAndHandlerURLs + 156
4   com.apple.MessageFramework      0x00960b2c +[URLifier _urlMatchesForString:startIndex:matches:] + 1820
5   com.apple.MessageFramework      0x00960024 +[URLifier urlMatchesForString:] + 348
6   com.apple.mail                  0x0004cc44 0x1000 + 310340
7   com.apple.CoreFoundation        0x940159a8 __invoking___ + 168
8   com.apple.CoreFoundation        0x94015230 -[NSInvocation invoke] + 128
9   com.apple.MessageFramework      0x009f49ec -[MonitoredInvocation invoke] + 392
10  com.apple.MessageFramework      0x009f461c -[InvocationQueue _drainQueue] + 656
11  com.apple.Foundation            0x90ad9d84 __NSThread__main__ + 1004
12  libSystem.B.dylib               0x93438f70 _pthread_start + 316

Answer 1

Since you had a faulty RAM, the first target of corruption is the whole filesystem. It is a good point to have eliminated this possibility of huge trouble.

If your problem does only appears within Mail this could mean that one of the files Mail had to write back was corrupted (in RAM).

To confirm this hypothesis:

1. make a backup

2. quit Mail and make a local backup of your Mail library (the following are shell commands to type within Terminal):

   cd ~/Library
   mv Mail Mail.backup
   

3. start Mail, create you a minimal account configuration and send yourself an E-mail

   If Mail doesn't crash, the problem stands within one of your Mail library file

   If Mail still crashes, report it.

4. quit Mail and put back in place the library you backed up at step 2:

   cd ~/Library
   rm -rf Mail
   mv Mail.backup Mail
   

If step 3 confirms that the problem stands within your Mail library, and if your mailboxes aren't too big, you could then make a rebuild of them:

1. launch Mail

2. select

   Mailbox > Rebuild
   

3. be patient, don't corrupt its rebuilding task, open the activity window:

   Window > Activity