April 25, 2005 3:18 AM PDT

Mac OS X 10.3.9 (#8): Sluggish Mail.app performance, solutions; Drive/media mounting issues; more

by CNET staff

Sluggish Mail.app performance Readers continue to note sluggish performance from Mail.app after installing Mac OS X 10.3.9. In fact, this has become one of the most widely reported problems with the update.

The most commonly reported issues include:

Extremely slow retrieval of mail
Pauses or freezes when synchronizing folders
Pauses or freezes when 'Comparing Notes with Server'

MacFixIt reader Seth Dolman writes:

"Mail.app has been performing quite sluggishly since applying the 10.3.9 update. Repairing disk permissions and clearing caches (system and user via Onyx and mail by deleting in ~/Library/Mail) do not fix the problems. Also, Mail.app has not been remembering SMTP settings, and it keeps reverting to another SMTP server than the one I keep setting."

Donald Broadribb adds:

"Since installing 10.3.9 I have found that when I go to load Mail it takes upwards of a minute for it to show up. (There was the same problem after one of the OS 10.3 updates a few updates ago, which was fixed by one of the later updates.) Once loaded, there seems to be no problem in retrieving messages. It is a bit slow in sending messages, though."

Potential Solutions

Reverting to an earlier vesion of Mail.app Some readers have reported that obtaining a copy of Mail.app from a volume containing an earlier version of Mac OS X 10.3.x (10.3.8, for instance) resolves the performance bottleneck introduced by Mac OS X 10.3.9. The new version is 1.3.11, and the prior release is version 1.3.9. Note, however, that this procedure may undo security refinements introduced by the latest release of Mail.app.

Doug Miner writes:

"I appear to have fixed the problem by copying Mail.app from another disk with OS 10.3.8 installed on it. I just copied the app (no other associated files) and moved it to replace the version that came with 10.3.9. Everything seems to work fine now."

Emptying deleted mail Emptying messages from both the "Deleted Messages" and "Junk Mail" folders prior to quitting Mail.app reduces the quit and subsequent launch times for some readers.

MacFixIt reader Jim Forsman writes:

"One way that I have found not to have Mail stall when quitting, is manually to 'Erase Deleted Messages' and 'Erase Junk Mail' from the 'Mailbox' menu. If I fail to do this, Mail delays quitting for many minutes, but if I do, Mail quits promptly. (Note that in, Preferences -> Accounts -> Special Mailboxes, I have enabled "Erase Messages in the Junk Mailbox" and "Erase deleted messages" when quitting.)"

Deleting Mail.app cache and .plist file Deleting the following folder:

~/Library/Mail/Caches/Mail

and this file:

~/Library/Preferences/com.apple.mail.plist

may provide faster Mail.app performance in some cases.

Turning off SSL Turning off the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) option in Mail.app's preferences (Click "Server Settings..." for the desired account) appears to resolve performance issues with IMAP servers in some cases.

MacFixIt reader Chris Janton, for instance, writes:

"When connecting to the IMAP server using SSL on port 993 all sorts of odd behavior - slow, not completely quitting, etc.

"If you turn off secure mail (back to port 143) the bad behavior seems to go away, at least I haven't observed the odd behavior."

Drive/media mounting issues Users continue to report issues with mounting drives and removable media after upgrading to Mac OS X 10.3.9.

MacFixIt reader Tony reports that manually mounting items through Disk Utility (located in Applications/Utilities) is successful in his case.

Tony writes:

"Ever since I installed 10.3.9, none of my volumes want to mount automatically (DVDs, Firewire HD, etc.). Usually a quick trip to Disk Utility to do a manual mount solves the problem, but it sure is annoying."

For more suggestions on resolving mounting issues in Mac OS X, see our tutorial "Ejecting media in Mac OS X: Removing 'stuck' CDs/DVDs."

Previous Mac OS X 10.3.9 coverage