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Strange repeating e-mail from MAILER-DAEMON

I send out e-mail alerts to people who have requested them concerning +The New Southern View Ezine+ in Jackson, Mississippi.

I recently sent out an e-mail to eddie.j.miller@xxxx.xxx and received a return e-mail from MAILER-DAEMON@gxxxx.xxx stating that:


The following message to <eddie.j.miller@xxxx.xxx> was undeliverable.
The reason for the problem:
5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-'5.1.1 User unknown'
Reporting-MTA: dns; xxxx.xxx

Final-Recipient: rfc822;eddie.j.miller@xxxx.xxx
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0 (permanent failure)
Remote-MTA: dns; xxx.xxx.xxxx.xx
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 5.1.0 - Unknown address error 550-'5.1.1 User unknown' (delivery attempts: 0)


I took this name off of my list.

Now when I open the Mail program or swap between accounts within the program, I find four identical e-mails, like the one above. I trash them and when I turn around, they're back — all four of them! All the same!

If this were a horror movie, there'd be weird music and screams in the distance.

I can tell who Eddie works for by the domain name so I contacted their IT and told him what was happening. He said that Eddie had retired and his account was discontinued. So he'd check it from his end.

Here's where it gets really strange! While waiting to hear back from the IT, I turned off my modem and looked at Mail again.

With the modem off, the same thing happens — I trash the four e-mails, look in the trash folder, erase the deleted e-mails, and return to my Inbox. They're back — and this is with the modem off.

This tells me that the problem is internal, right? Meanwhile, the mailbox where these mystery e-mails show up is indicating that it's still receiving e-mails (the little spinny indicator is going around next to the mailbox's name).

I've tried restarting the Mail program and restarting the Mac. I don't want to trash the Prefs as then I'd have to rebuild all five of my Mail accounts. But if I have to, I will.

Can anyone offer a solution?

450 MHz G4, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Feb 4, 2009 6:38 PM

Reply
18 replies

Feb 4, 2009 10:40 PM in response to William Pitts

Hi William,

Did you remove it from the Sent folder yet?

Hi studiomorphic1, and a warm welcome to the forums! 🙂

Not certain, but this can fix myriad Mail problems...

Safe Boot from the HD, (holding Shift key down at bootup), run Disk Utility in Applications>Utilities, then highlight your drive, click on Repair Permissions, then move these folder & file to the Desktop.

Move this Folder to the Desktop...

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Caches/Mail/

Move this file to the Desktop...

/Users/YourUserName/Library/Mail/Envelope Index

Reboot.

Feb 5, 2009 5:49 PM in response to William Pitts

Yes, we may be on to it, do you know if you have any 3rd Party addons?

Check System Preferences>Accounts>Login Items window to see if it or something unknown is listed.

Also look in these if they exist, some are invisible...

/private/var/run/StartupItems
/Library/StartupItems
/System/Library/StartupItems

You may have to In finder, select Go menu>Go to Folder, and paste un the path to see what is in them.

Please list what is in each.

Feb 5, 2009 7:25 PM in response to BDAqua

I checked as you suggested and found nothing that wasn't there prior to this problem.

The only changes I've made lately: uninstalling You Control Tunes (interesting but unnecessary) and updating QuickTime from version 7.5.5 to 7.6. Both on 2/2/09 which is the day I sent out those e-mails that I mentioned at the beginning of this thread.

I've run into problems with QT updates before but only within the app.

Thanks again for your attention to this strange problem,
Bill

Feb 5, 2009 8:21 PM in response to BDAqua

Thanks re the reinstall but I have two internal HDs (one with OSX and the other with OS9) and I copied 7.5.5 over to the OS9 HD.

Check THIS out. I went into Mail's Prefs and switched Check for new mail to MANUALLY from a time scheduled check, and now Mail quits normally! Stranger and stranger.

I am now going to get rid of QT 7.6 in favor of 7.5.5 and see what happens. I'll report back.

Bill

Feb 5, 2009 8:56 PM in response to William Pitts

I had the same problem email message delivery failure, it duplicated itself 3 more times, couldn't shut down mail or delete. Ran disk utility and Disc Warrior, dont recall if it found anything but afterwards I could quit mail ok. I delete them from inbox, then from the trash, when I go back to the inbox all 4 are there again. They are still there. I even logged in thru the web browser and deleted them from there but no luck.

The date on the emails are Dec 31 2008 at 8:39am all identical.

I just marked them as junk they disappear but don't go to junk and return when I go back to the Inbox.

Message was edited by: lkooz

Feb 5, 2009 9:26 PM in response to lkooz

Hi Ikooz,
It's like you're describing my problem exactly!

I'm trying another tack. I've back-up the Inbox in question. I created an mbox file, a common format for storing mail messages, to quote the Mail Help file. This file on backing up e-mails goes on to say: To create an mbox copy of a mailbox, drag the mailbox from the mailbox list to your desktop. Simple enough.

I did this for both my Inbox as well as my Sent Messages. (I'm a sloppy house-keeper!) Then, I went into Accounts in the Preferences window and deleted the mailbox in question. Now I'll recreate the mailbox with all of the original settings and see what happens. My quandary is: do I do it now, or tomorrow, or does it really matter?

Either way, I'll let you know what happens here.

Thanks,
Bill

Feb 6, 2009 1:05 PM in response to William Pitts

I could not quit the mail program at all and had to unplug the computer to shut down and booted and ran from the start up disc and checked the hard drives and repaired permissions. I was able to start and shut down the computer after that and open and close the mail program without any issues. I ran Norton and Disc Doctor after that just to see if it found anything and I don't recall the outcome of that.

I still have the emails in my Inbox but I dont seem to have any issues running anything that I can tell. Just can't get rid of them.

Strange repeating e-mail from MAILER-DAEMON

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