Q: Hang up in "Internet Accounts" in System Preferences.

I followed tonyrk's suggestion however found that reading and deleting so many lines of code was cumbersome in my 77 mb + file. So i  went ahead made a copy of accounts.plist file on desktop and deleted the file completely from the folder ( as specified in the Tonyrk log above).

This has fortunately completely resolved my problem. I had no problems with my internet accounts since and did not even loose my internet account information.

Just restarted my computer just to make sure and it is working like a breeze, specially mail. I am so glad I am back to using Mail. I was sick of using the overly loaded Airmail interface.

I struggled with this problem since Mavericks release and am surprised the solution was so simple.....I had contacted apple support also and emailed feedback several times at Apple website and had not been able to solve the issue.

Two days out, Mail still working great ! love it

imac 27"

1 TB fusion drive

24 GB RAM

2.9 Ghz Intel core i5

Os X 10.9.1

Great - also followed tonyrk's instructions & my accounts.plist went down from 38Mb to 9kb  !!

Right now in the process of creating my mail-accounts again ... pfff ... it works !!

Roost15  - thanks for input/attention !!

Happy to see there are fellow mac-users to help to fix !!

arno

The answer was amazing!  Had somewhere around 45Mb and went down to 1 Kb!!! Mail works like a charm.  Had many many entries of mail at msn, and only one of my original mail.  Was easy to delete the unnecessary entries.

Unfortunately, I lost many of my emails (fortunately??) trying other ways to solve the problem. 

Could have been much worse! (open window, computer is very light...)

Thanks all!!

dave

I used this workaround and it seemed to stop the hang up.

https://discussions.apple.com/message/25003487#25003487

bthomp2420

Re: Unable to load iCloud and Internet accounts in System Preferences

Nov 18, 2013 11:10 PM (in response to moog5)

Try deleting the contents of ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.iCloudHelper and then kill the com.apple.iCloudHelper process in the activity monitor.

I just today upgraded from Mountain Lion to Mavericks 10.9.2 on my iMac as the Mail problem had reportedly been fixed. However I found that Mail was not working properly - some mailboxes seemed to be empty in my Outlook.com IMAP account and messages dragged to the Trash in my Gmail accounts bounced back into my Inboxes. As well as that, Mail would not quit, at least not in a reasonable time, though it was not shown in red (not responding) in the Force Quit dialogue box.

I also found that I had the hang on trying to access Internet Accounts in System Preferences - I didn't try to access iCloud but after reading this thread I found the same with that pane. The advice in the post by mybandmd on 28 February fixed the hang problem in System Preferences for both iCloud and Internet Accounts panes. I also ran Repair Disk Permissions which I ought to have done immediately on upgrading.

Tonyrk's advice about editing the accounts.plist file didn't seem to apply to me as mine was only 12 kB, but I had a look at it anyway. It seemed not to be in a good state, containing entries for accounts I no longer use and which don't appear in the Internet Accounts pane or in Mail/Preferences/Accounts either. Rather than just removing these, I saved an unchanged copy on the desktop and trashed the original as suggested by roost15.

Mail is now starting and quitting almost normally, though it still shows nothing in the inbox for a short time before messages appear, unlike Mail in Mountain Lion which had no delay - that's the same as on my MacBook Pro which I had upgraded to Mavericks ages ago but which I don't use often for checking emails. The accounts.plist file has not been re-created, which suggests that it is not necessary but may be used by Mail if it is present. However it may come back when I restart, which I don't want to do until Time Machine has finished its deep scan during the first backup since I installed Mavericks.

Further to my previous post, I have now discovered that, in 10.9.2 Mavericks, Mail keeps the Accounts.plist file in ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.mail/Data/Library/Mail/V2/Maildata. This file does not contain the additional entries mentioned in my last post and appears to be updated (or rather re-created) continuously while Mail is running. I quit Mail to look at the contents but haven't restarted my iMac.

I checked the modification date of the Accounts.plist file in the Trash and it has not been modified since 13 September 2013, suggesting that an upgrade to Mail in Mountain Lion changed the location of this plist file. Sure enough, that date corresponds to the date of the 10.8.5 upgrade, which included "Fixes an issue that may prevent Mail from displaying messages ".

I had the same issue. Internet Accounts in preferences would not load and Mail would start to load and freeze and then create an error file. This was after the upgrade to 10.9.2. I determined (thanks to a lot of help from this forum) that the problem was with the Accounts.plist folder in the Library. I deleted this file (I believe that all it does is record the Accounts you have signed up for). I also at the sam time deleted the icloud.plist file. After I did this I could then add a new account under preferences. (i.e. just added back my email account information from my provider).

Mail started to load at this point but had none of my previous emails. I was able to import them all back into Mail. I also had to rejoin icloud. Strangely I had also lost my calendar data This came back after a restart. All in all a very frustrating few hours.

I belileve the root cause of my email problem (failing to load after upgrade to 10.9.2) was that he Accounts.plist file was corrupted somehow. I have seen people talk about other problems with mail but before doing anything else check that when you click on preferences you can actually get to Intenet Accounts. If not suggest you try the above. A number of people talk about how to get to Accounts.plist file so wont repeat that info.

Thanks to everyone. And hope this helps also.

Thanks - this worked for me (to allow me to delete my otherwise inactive Google account from the list of accounts!)

As I suspected, Mail now opens much quicker and runs perfectly.

Are there any more details?  There is no Containers Folder in the Library.  I did a search of the Library, there was no Accounts.plist or iCloud.plist.  What should I be doing different?  Where else can I look?

This is what fixed mine, after hours of trying the other suggestions, plus many others THANKS:

Nov 18, 2013 11:10 PM (in response to moog5)

Try deleting the contents of ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.iCloudHelper and then kill the com.apple.iCloudHelper process in the activity monitor.

I have the same issue, the Accounts.plist is not a fix for me since mine is 4k.....

after 10.11.2 upgrade when I go to 'internet accounts' it is empty and I get the loading beach ball symbol. mail/calendar do not work at all. I can reboot and get it back.

in console I see the following logs:14.12.15 11:05:37,975 CalNCService[382]: [com.apple.calendar.store.log.accounts] [We timed out trying to get 9078C13C-7570-44E3-B20B-48674B86D88B's parent account.]

and I can not see anything else obvious, any ideas?

I have also tried deleting: ~/Library/Caches/com.apple.iCloudHelper and /Library/Application\ Support/AddressBook/Sources/ and ~/Library/Calendars/ as it really does seemed to be related to that timeout error.

I have it!

I dropped to terminal root and ran 'lsof' to see what processes where using what files..... I searched for everything using 'calendar'..... which led me to this entry:accountsd   354          jweber  txt       REG                1,4      42336             67286184 /System/Library/Accounts/UI/CalendarUIPlugin.bundle/Contents/MacOS/CalendarUIPl ugin

I then looked for the accountsd process and killed it.....

It respawned and my 'internet accounts', mac mail and calendar work again.

I hope this help someone. If you are not comfortable with terminal then recommend finding accountsd in the activity monitor.

I had exactly the same issues like yours.  Even my Messages, Facetime, Web Browser were not responding at some point. Every time they were not responding, I found that the "Internet Account" was empty. Next time I will try kill accountsd.

Will report back.