Intermittent access to mail

Thanks for the suggestion. I have tried it on the iMac but it has made no difference. The iBook has now also taken to not receiving any emails at all on the two problem accounts. I did hear back from BT Yahoo but it was a half baked standard response and did not address my main problem. So we are still stuck with no clear idea as to whether the fault is at my end or theirs. It is its apparently random nature that perplexes me. The iMac lost two accounts at once but the iBook stuttered on for several days before it reached the same condition. All very odd!

I have just looked back through the forum again and saw someone had a similar problem which was caused by the variable spam filters on the server being set too high. They lowered them and mail flowed again. Could this be it? The trouble is that I cannot acess any adjustable spam filters on the BT Yahoo web site.

Edward Mason

By the way, I should probably have said originally that the message I sometimes (but not always) get after trying to get mail is:

"The mail server denied access to the account "masonlowgill" because an administrator or other mail client was using it when Mail tried to log in. Please try again later.

The server error encountered was: maildrop busy."

This does not mean much to me and in any case must be wrong as nobody else is using it at my end.

Edward Mason

No, they are all a POP accounts.

I have tried several things since I last posted:

I checked out Mail with Connection Doctor. The results were a bit patchy but by re-entering passwords etc. I managed to get a green light against all the headings. Then tried to download mail but no good.
I reloaded Mail application but no improvement.
I installed Thunderbird and tried with that. Just the same result': 'Maildrop busy'
I disconnected my wifi and tried using Ethernet. No joy.
I reconnected the wifi and tried accessing my email with my iPod and lo and behold it downloaded everything from all my accounts. However my computer still refused to download two of my accounts. Same old message.

What on earth can be the matter? If the iPod works it can hardly be the BT Yahoo server. Makes you want to buy a PC!

I began to try your suggestion but on attempting to enter the Network settings I encountered a window that popped up saying 'Your network settings have been altered by another application' and this window could not be got rid of except by shutting off the power and starting up again. At this point I took the machine in to an Apple repairer who had fitted a new Superdrive only two weeks ago and I knew he had installed several Apple System updates at the same time.

It appears that this is a bug of some sort (resulting from the system update) and maybe it had been upsetting my connections with my mail server because after he corrected it (by removing some corrupt files: com.apple.prefs.plist; apple.nat.plist; network.airport.plist and preferences.plist) I was able to collect my mail again. So all's well that ends well!

Thank you for your help

Edward Mason

I rejoiced too soon!

My Mac did manage to retrieve a couple of emails on one of the bad accounts after getting it back from the repair shop (where it had received a backlog of hundreds from all accounts) and I thought that was that and switched off. This morning I find that it is back to exactly the old tricks: receiving mail on one account but not on the other two. The iBook is still just as bad.

I have tried your final suggestion (new location) as well as your original one again but no improvement. I have reset all the accounts for the nth time and cleaned up my keychain access but still no good. TBird is no good either. However all the emails are there on the BT Yahoo webmail site and my iPod gets them all with no trouble at all. I suspect the problem lies not in the Mail app. but somewhere in the network/airport connection to the internet but that is nly geussing. Probably the bug I experienced with the Network settings, which was rectified by the repair shop, was nothing to do with retrieving mail.

This is the most frustrating problem I have encountered in 20 years of using a Mac. I suppose I could approach Apple but I just can't face all those long phone calls and hanging on listening to music.

I have run Console but nothing happened as I opened up Mail. I have looked at the previous stuff on console but am afraid that it does not mean much to me and it only seems to go back 24 hours or so.

I have just done something else though: I deleted all three Mail accounts and was about to re-create them when I realised that I had also lost all my old Inbox and Sent box emails. So I tried to recover these from my daily back up hard drive but they failed to restore from the incremental backups for either Thurs 5th or Fri 6th March. I then went right back to my last full backup on 7th Feb. This worked fine and restored my mailboxes to that date and also reset my accounts. The settings looked the same as they do now but when I tried to 'Get mail' it began to retrieve mail ON ALL THREE ACCOUNTS !

I thought this had cracked it (though I do not understand why) but the mail retrieval stopped at 10.32 on the 18th Feb and would go no further (except on the one account which still works). Looking back at my usage I found that the machine was in the repair shop then (for the first time) having a new Superdrive fitted. I have not been able to talk to the guy since finding this out but this could have been about the time he started work on it. What on earth could have happened?

I think that it must be something to do with the Mail account settings (as restoring Mail settings to 7th Feb got it going again) but I also think that it must be to do with the Network settings as my iBook developed the same problem only after I got the iMac back from the repair shop on the 20th Feb. I am totally baffled, as I think the guy in the repair shop might be.

If this was any other App I would bin the preferences and then re-install the App. and create all new accounts but I don't see how this can be done without re-installing the whole system which seems a bit drastic. Also, how can I archive all my old sent and received emails before re-installing or deleting anything?

Hi, nice to know you're still there!

Before reading your latest post I had another go at restoring from my 7th Feb backup. This went as before with all three accounts beginning to download and this time one of them went as far as the 26th Feb then stopped but the other two went no further than before. However after that I found that NONE of my accounts would download my test emails. Clearly re-setting the settings back to the 7th Feb does something, but not enough.

I then made backups of all my mailboxes (like you just suggested) and deleted all my accounts and created new ones, very carefully. No good though, I still cannot retrieve any test mails from the server but I can see and read all my mail listed there. The iPod still works a treat! I have looked through the web server and cannot see anything especially dodgy looking, though I have deleted one or two unsolicited emails. The only thing I did not do like you have suggested was move the com.apple.mail.plist file. I might try this just now but I am not too hopeful.

Have just moved the plist file. When Mail restarted after that it was a bit strange, as if it was the first time I had ever used it - said things like 'This is a new version of Mail, would you like to see the additional features?' and other rubbish. Also, my newly inserted accounts were missing so I put them all back in again and things seemed to settle down until I tried to retrieve some mail. One account managed to retrieve three more this time but the other two remained the same!

I cannot fathom this erratic operation. Usually things work or they don't. With this problem things are slightly different each time. I am now more baffled than ever!