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Mail hangs when dragging anything into Dock Icon

Hi, I have an odd issue. I rarely use the mouse to perform drag & drop operations, as I use quicksilver most of the time, however, from time to time, I just "drag" pictures (screen captures) to the Dock Icon of Mail to quickly send 'em over.

I have mail open 99% of the time so it's running. Apart from the odd "duplicate message" that I got used to, something strange started happening lately. I found this out a few days ago but didn't do anything until today where I tried to find a solution (without success).

The thing is, I drag a picture (or many) or a chunk of text or whatever you imagine, to Mail's Dock Icon. Automatically one "empty" message is created (as usual since Leopard) and then, when the second window appears, it remains empty and spin ball appears. I have to force quit Mail.

Things I've tried:

- Reindex Mail (removing envelope). Not fixed.
- Reboot (of course!). Not Fixed.
- Try with Mail Closed or Opened in advance (same results).
- Read the logs: Couldn't find anything interesing and/or related.
- Submit crash reports: did it at least 10 times.

I've run out of ideas. It's very annoying because I happen to do that from time to time... :S

Other details I've found after further inspection:

Mail appears to enter into some sort of LOOP. Because RAM starts growing and growing until no ram is left (2GB) and therefore, Swapping starts. Taking a look at Activity Mon shows exactly that.

Any pointer that could give me a hint where to start?

I'd appreciate that, thanks.

P.S: I have enought HDD space left (7gigs), I've tried with a cold reboot, open mail, drag. Same result. I haven't repaired permissions (but will try, tho I have the feeling that it doesn't have anything to do).
I don't know exactly when this started, but for sure it used to work "a few days ago".

Thanks in advance.

MacBook Pro 15'' 2.0, Mac OS X (10.5.2), iPod Touch 8GB, Fast Trak Pro USB Audio IF, Guitar Rig 3 Audio IF

Posted on Mar 24, 2008 10:12 AM

49 replies

Apr 8, 2008 9:42 PM in response to Martin Marconcini

In the original message one said: "Automatically one "empty" message is created (as usual since Leopard)". Let me just tell u that this is a problem caused by Growl. It annoyed me a lot before but since i stopped growl in the system preferences in never occurred again.

Apr 9, 2008 1:26 AM in response to rcrd_leitao

rcrd_leitao wrote:
In the original message one said: "Automatically one "empty" message is created (as usual since Leopard)". Let me just tell u that this is a problem caused by Growl. It annoyed me a lot before but since i stopped growl in the system preferences in never occurred again.

Unfortunately I don't have Growl enabled. I have the preference pane (and it's up to date) because AdiumX installs it, but I have had it disabled for months.

Thanks for the idea, we need ideas, lots of ideas.

Martin.

Apr 17, 2008 12:13 PM in response to Martin Marconcini

In case you are tempted to try (I already did):

Safari 3.1.1 (the latest update) doesn't fix anything related to this. 😟

Next update perhaps…

May 1, 2008 1:59 PM in response to Martin Marconcini

This problem was making me nuts and I am so glad to see that I am not alone with this problem.

Thanks to all who have contributed to the solution to this vexing issue.

May 2, 2008 6:00 AM in response to Martin Marconcini

Martin: Great thanks for your investigative work, I had the same problem but having switched to Rich text all is well again. In my case it solves the issue beautifully as I don't have to use plain text.
One thing I found interesting about this problem was that even though Mail crashed when an item was dragged onto the icon in the Dock, dragging that same item into an open window in Mail worked just fine. Too weird for my simple mind.

Thanks again!

/Halldor

May 30, 2008 1:34 AM in response to Halldór Björn Halldórsson

Hi @all,

Just in case you were wondering, OS X 10.5.3 does not fix this. At least for me, I quickly went to properties and switched to Plain Text and dragged an attachment. Boom. Hanged.

Time to start investigating the new Thunderbird? :S

Jun 8, 2008 4:09 PM in response to Martin Marconcini

Martin, you're my hero! This has been driving me batty for weeks!

Jejc

Level 1

0 points

Jun 13, 2008 2:00 AM in response to Martin Marconcini

Thank you very much Martin! You save me!!

It works again. Same cause and same solution: I switched back to RTF by default and kept my signatures. The problem occured as well when using the service menu, or 'send by mail' feature in different software (like NeoOffice). Now it works everywhere.

Now the question is: HOW TO MAKE APPLE AWARE OF THIS PROBLEM AND THIS SOLUTION???

Thanks, bye.

Jun 13, 2008 12:45 PM in response to Martin Marconcini

Switched to Rich Text, all is well again. How annoying. I hope 10.5.4 fixes this.

Jun 15, 2008 9:08 AM in response to Halldór Björn Halldórsson

Same problem here, and I refuse to use rich text. This has been going on for so long now actually, that it has started to affect my behaviour. I just don't drag things to Mail anymore, which is rather a sad testament to how long this bug has been around now.

Barney-15E

Level 10

113,046 points

Jun 17, 2008 6:22 AM in response to Egil Helland

I've still got no issues with Mail hanging. There has to be something else going on. I can use plain text, rich text, sig, no sig. It just doesn't hang.

As this is a relatively small thread, I don't think anyone at Apple is going to notice. If you haven't, Provide Mail feedback… to Apple from the Mail menu.

Has anyone looked at the Console logs after this hang occurs? There is a HangReporter log in /Library/Logs, if there is nothing in the main two log displays.

Jun 17, 2008 8:30 AM in response to Barney-15E

Apple is -i hope- well aware of this, as I have provided a detailed bug report and had a "duplicate" response.

I know that on a new system this doesn't happen, but something is breaking AppleScript or whatever Apple uses to do this "drag->create mail" thing.

This started happening after the Safari 3.x update, so it must be somehwere in WebKit or similar.

I have been trying to find a pattern, but only have one Mac to test and mine fails. 😟

The logs don't have much info at all, as far as I've been able to see.

Barney-15E

Level 10

113,046 points

Jun 17, 2008 11:34 AM in response to Martin Marconcini

Mine works on PPC G5 1.8 GHz, Single Processor and a MacBook Pro. So, I've got old and new.
You can try disabling the WebKit plugin via Get Info… on the Mail icon.

Jun 18, 2008 1:49 AM in response to Barney-15E

I have already done that, and it works if you do that, but then you see a blue brick instead of images in mails. So disabling WebKit for mail is not an option (I'd rather use RichText).

Remember that the bug started after the 3.1 safari update. Something in webkit conflicts with something that we had. The problem is finding out what could that be.

😟

This is the log report for xxx-Mail.hang:

Date/Time: 2008-06-18 10:39:55 +0200
OS Version: 10.5.3 (Build 9D34)
Architecture: i386
Report Version: 4

Command: Mail
Path: /Applications/Mail.app/Contents/MacOS/Mail
Version: 3.3 (924)
Build Version: 1
Project Name: Mail
Source Version: 9240000
Parent: launchd [279]

PID: 5660
Event: hang
Time: 6.44s
Steps: 18

And that's it.

:S

Jul 2, 2008 6:12 AM in response to Martin Marconcini

Fantastic! Thank you for solving this annoying problem.

Mail hangs when dragging *anything* into Dock Icon