Q: Is anyone still having mail connection failures ?
Hi
Just the other day I finally bit the bullet and managed to get one of the last new Mac Pros still obtainable. It came with Mountain Lion 10.8.2. Everything went brilliantly until I came to transferring my mail accounts and mailboxes from the old system.
Then 2 days of night and day frustration began. I eventually spoke to a very nice young man at Apple UK support. When I got a bit fed up with being patronised I quietly reminded him that I have been using Macs to earn my living since 1993 when I hung a IIfx as a terminal off the Prime mini computer that was humming away in its own personal air-conditioned room. So he basically said that Mountain Lion is absolutely brilliant and if I didn't like it I should use something else.
Thanks.
Then I tried Thunderbird and started again. Not really any better. Even considered adding Outlook to my Office package ... which just shows how desperate things were !
So back to Mail again to see what I could achieve. Passwords were being randomly dropped, SSL could not be deselected, port numbers would revert for no apparent reason ... and on ... and on ...
So I looked at the Keychain - and there were password entries in an apparently endless list. When I had a look at what they were it became obvious that every time I was forced to re-enter a password or an SSL setting or port number in a mail account a brand new keychain entry was being made rather than overwriting the original one.
So one by one I went through the whole lot deleting all duplicates for the same server. I left the window open and re-edited each mail account to ensure that the info was correct, making sure that when a new password entry appeared in the key chain I deleted the one it should have replaced. This way I finally ended up with a single keychain entry for each mail server entry.
It seemed for a while to do the trick ... well, mostly.
There are still some connections failing - but not always the same ones. Of the 16 active mail boxes there are always at least 2 with a warning triangle. These change from time to time, and running the Connection Doctor hardly ever conforms to which accounts have the triangle. Connection Doctor shows some accounts failing (usually 2 or 3) which do not have warning triangles in the mailbox list, and shows successful connections for those that do.
My connection is via ethernet cable to BT Infinity router running at about 30 -ish Mbps. So there shouldn't be a time-out issue, which is all this can logically be attributed to.
All very puzzling really, but at least if the failures keep changing it suggests that there is nothing more I can do to improve it - it's just VOODOO ... and at least I stand a chance as the failure dance rotates at random of eventually getting and sending mail from all accounts ... eventually.
I do hope someone from Apple trawls these discussions as it's high time they put their arrogance on pause for a moment and pulled their fingers out pretty smartish before they loose the enthusiastic support they've enjoyed for more than 20 years.
Posted on Mar 14, 2013 7:29 AM